Closing the hatch, he signalled for the chamber to be drained. Commander RN Entomb'd within that narrow fateful bark, Not Thetis self, immortal herein born, Could raise her namesake from the waters dark. By the time the door was opened, both he and his companion had died of their exertions. She was used as a minelayer from 1907 and was sunk in 1918 as a blockship at Zeebrugge. In the torpedo room, Woods ordered everyone through number one watertight bulkhead door and into the torpedo stowage compartment. The only way to save themselves without assistance from the surface was to somehow pump or blow the water out. Only a few months previously, on a training escape in a 5-metre-deep tank, he had lost consciousness and his life was only just saved by an instructor who drained the tank quickly, but this information never reached the submarine. Their bodies were taken aft to lie with the other four. Woods was also unaware that a few weeks earlier, a painter, working on the other side of the torpedo door, had allowed enamel to drip inside the test tap and solidify. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. After lunch, the captain gave those personnel who would not be involved in the diving trials an opportunity to leave the submarine and transfer to the accompanying tug. "As soon as he felt that blast of wind he knew something was wrong, but he didn't know what.". ( Log Out /  Vicki JordanMy mother, Joan Rocke, aged 93 and living in Chester remembers this incident well. As the water rose up over their heads Shaw reached up, released the clip, and pushed against the hatch. Instead, confident that No.5 tube was empty like the others and that the bow-cap was closed, as the others had been, Lieutenant Woods ordered the rear door of No.5 tube to be opened. These people were 26 Cammell Laird shipyard employees, 9 dockyard managers and fitters, 9 Royal Navy officers from submarine headquarters, 4 Vickers Armstrong employees and 2 representatives of a firm of Liverpool caterers, who were to supply the pies, sandwiches and beer. Going from tube to tube, Woods found each of them empty, which might well be why the submarine had refused to dive. Shut they appeared to be, but the indicators were marked 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 5, instead of in the correct numerical order, so that the dial at the very bottom actually indicated number five tube, not number six. This is a latch which allows a torpedo tube door to be opened no more than a small amount in case it is open to the sea at the bow end. He ordered the chamber to be drained and the door to be opened slowly. Had the boat been on an even keel, the water would have drained straight into the bilges, but because of the angle the water ran forward onto the main motors and the switchboard. This seemed a good idea until it was realised that the torpedo loading hatch in the flooded torpedo stowage compartment was designed to withstand external pressure, but if they pumped air into that compartment with sufficient pressure to force the sea out of the torpedo tube it would also lift the hatch off its seating just enough to let all the air out. Only 69 of Thetis's crew were sailors, the rest were mainly engineers from Cammell Laird. With the test tap blocked, Woods believed it was safe to open the door inside the submarine. Coordinates: 38°15′0″N 13°15′0″E / 38.25°N 13.25°E / 38.25; 13.25. Oram and Woods made a successful escape and reached the surface safely, but were in a very bad way as their bodies reacted violently from breathing air with a high concentration of carbon dioxide and depleted of oxygen then suddenly breathing pure oxygen. All hands were lost and Thunderbolt settled to the bottom in 1,350 m of water. She had dived at 1.40 pm and was not expected to surface for three hours. It was decided to spend the night lightening the stern of the submarine by discharging drinking water and fuel oil in order to get the aft escape hatch closer to the surface. At some stage, while the water was flooding in, one of them decided he could not continue. Meanwhile, above water, the observers aboard the Grebecock were getting worried. When entering the forepart of the submarine, the pressure would change from ordinary atmospheric pressure in the un-flooded section to six kilos on every square centimetre of the man’s body. The torpedo tubes on a submarine have two doors, one at each end. The air we breathe consists of nitrogen, which plays no part in sustaining life, and oxygen, a portion of which is absorbed into our blood through the lungs to keep us alive. Woods then decided to undertake one of the many jobs he had on his check-list for that day, to inspect the inside of the tubes and particularly the bow-cap seals, which had previously given some trouble and had leaked badly. The crew waited before abandoning the vessel until it had been discovered by the destroyer Brazen, which had been sent to search for it and which indicated her presence by dropping small explosive charges into the water. Lieutenant Frederick Woods, the torpedo officer, opened the test cocks on the tubes. Salvage work continued until the Thetis was aground and it was possible to re-enter the submarine to remove the bodies. Submerged for 13 hours, oxygen on board was quickly running out. Because she was a new vessel that had not yet been accepted into the Royal Navy, there was a casual, somewhat ill defined division of responsibility. There were 99 men still inside as she went down. Woods and his men fought against the gushing water to close the forward watertight bulkhead, but a jammed butterfly nut and the difficulty of pulling a heavy door upwards against the angle which Thetis had taken made this impossible. It was decided that Captain Oram should carry the message about their situation to the surface tied to his wrist, and he asked for a volunteer to accompany him. Thetis, People of the American Civil War by state, Articles incorporating text from Wikipedia, British T-class submarines of the Royal Navy, World War II submarines of the United Kingdom, World War II shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/3485.html, Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy, List of submarine classes of the Royal Navy, https://military.wikia.org/wiki/HMS_Thetis_(N25)?oldid=4423383, 15.25 kn (17.55 mph; 28.24 km/h) (surfaced), 4,500 nmi (5,200 mi; 8,300 km) at 11 kn (13 mph; 20 km/h). The crew of Thunderbolt and their 'Jolly Roger' flag, after a patrol in the Mediterranean. Immediately the inner door of No.5 tube was opened, thousands of gallons of seawater rushed into the compartment and with the hundreds of tons of water in this forward area, the ship threatened to sink to the bottom. The play was called Close Enough To Touch and was written by Liverpool writer Fred Lawless. The loss went beyond that of a submarine's crew. When the two men were released from the chamber it was obvious that even Woods, shivering from his second attempt, could not be expected to try again. He could see sunlight, but must have realised that he was not going to make it. Once the pressure reached the same level as that in the flooded area, the front door of the chamber could be opened and Chapman could climb into the forepart of the submarine, make his way to the tube space and shut the rear door, or even operate the lever closing the bow-cap. Below is a poem written by my great grandfather W.L.B.Hayter, In Memoriam R.G.B.H. Then, just to be sure, they circled the sunken submarine while the navigator recalculated his position and eventually sent out an amended position. As well as her normal complement of 59 men she was carrying technical observers from Cammell Laird and other naval personnel, a total of 103 men. In addition to the normal crew of 53, there were 26 Cammell Laird employees, another 9 naval officers, 4 Vickers-Armstrong employees and 2 caterers. It affects different people in different ways. HMS Thetis (1890) was an Apollo -class second-class protected cruiser launched in 1890. The bodies of the 99 men who suffocated remained inside Thetis for a further four months until the submarine was salvaged from the bottom of the Bay. A civilian diver from the salvage vessel Vigilant did manage to make one dive during the slack water between tides, but inspite of his best efforts, because of his lack of submarine knowledge he achieved nothing. When the next pair attempted to escape, the hatch would open only a few inches. He began to panic but Arnold indicated they should wait a little longer, even though his body was reacting violently to breathing pure oxygen. Under her first identity, HMS Thetis, she commenced sea trials on 4 March 1939. [4] The case is one of interest in English law, as the judges in this case accepted the Admiralty's claim on face value with no scrutiny, a ruling later overturned. She was examined and refitted and later commissioned into the Royal Navy again as HMS Thunderbolt. He vomited into the mouthpiece of his escape set and there was nothing he could do about it but hope the set would still function. The first position had been absolutely correct, but unfortunately, in his anxiety to get it right, the navigator had made a mistake and given a position twelve nautical miles from the Thetis’ actual position. High hopes were held for this approach, and if the man who had volunteered had been a trained diver there would have been no reason why it could not have been quickly successful. If, during the first stage, it was realised that a bow-cap was open, the door could be screwed shut again. Woods was convinced that the tube itself had fractured and that trying to shut the rear door against the inrush of water was hopeless. Captain Oram, Bolus, Chapman and Woods, along with Mr Baily, the Admiralty constructor, discussed what best could be done. With some difficulty they all scrambled aft, stopping to shut the heavy watertight door as they retreated. There was a reamer in the torpedo room, provided to clear the test-cock holes of any accumulated debris, but as the Thetis was brand new the lieutenant did not feel he needed to use it. To achieve this he ordered all of the torpedo tube rear doors  to be opened, one-by-one. To the officers,crew and civilians who lost their lives on June 2nd 1939 in HMS THETIS. The submarine, meanwhile, hung with her bow in the mud and her stern sticking up at an angle in about 50 metres of water. For some reason, when she was down, with only her gun and conning tower above water, she would not dive any further. Meanwhile, down below, the very steep angle of the bow was gradually easing off. Her only attendant vessel was a civilian tug, Grebecock. The observers on the Grebecock had been alarmed by the submarine's sudden dive, but they did not get a message to Fort Blockhouse, the submarine's Headquarters in Gosport, until 4.45p.m. The submarine was successfully salvaged and repaired, being commissioned in 1940 as HMS Thunderbolt under the command of Lt. Cdr. By the time the war ended Woods was a lieutenant commander and had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for service in destroyers. For the 99 men who tragically died in the disaster their memory lives on in the hearts of their families, and now, thanks to Out of the Blue, in the minds of theatergoers across the country.