Off Shivering Sand

At 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan 12, the little (643-ton) Swedish motor tanker Divina was plowing out of the Thames estuary, four miles from shore, between Red Sand Tower and the Shivering Sand banks. Second Mate Franz Leipelt, officer on watch, and a British pilot were on the bridge. At the helm, Swedish Able Seaman Herbert Tonning guided his ship at a cautious 10 knots through a calm, moonless night. From the bridge came a shouted order. Tonning spun the wheel, hard. He heard the crunch of steel on steel. Captain Karl Hammerberg, hunched over a pot of tea in the officers' saloon, was thrown headlong on the table. He ran to the bridge. The ship's clock stood at 7:04.

A Matter of Seconds. At 7 p.m. His Majesty's Submarine Truculent was headed up the Thames estuary for the Chatham Naval Base, after a diving test cruise in the North Sea. Aboard was her regular complement of six officers, 55 men, plus 18 civilian Navy yard technicians who had been checking up on recent repairs to the Truculent.

Most of the men, joking and waiting for supper, were standing around below decks. Second Class Engine Room Artificer Ed Buckingham was getting congratulations on his 32nd birthday. Navy Yard Surveyor Roy Stevens had just finished shaving. Leading Seaman Fred Henley got his supper early so that he could report for duty. He started up the conning tower to join the Truculent's bearded commander, Lieut. Cyril Philip Bowers (30), and three other young officers. Later Henley described what happened:

"Just as I was going up to the bridge, I heard the captain shout a quick order to the engine room. Almost at once we were struck. With the others, I stood still. In a matter of seconds, the ship seemed to sink beneath us and go straight down." Henley, Bowers and the three others were floundering in the sea.

A Matter of Minutes. Water gushed into the forward torpedo room through the hole made by the Divina's prow. Before the lights went out Civilian Stevens had a chance to check the depth gauge: the Truculent rested on the bottom, 42 feet below the surface. "I knew then that an escape could be made," said Stevens. "All that worried me was what would happen on top."

At a cry of "Everybody aft," men stumbled into two compartments: the engine room and the engineer's mess. Watertight doors were dogged shut with 20 men in the engine room, 22 in the mess.

In the engine room Chief Petty Officer Sam Hine, who had spent 20 of his 37 years in the Navy, was the senior rank present. He asked, "Who can swim?" Swimmers volunteered to give their escape gear* to those nonswimmers who had none.

Then Hine and his men began as desperate and difficult a job as seamen can undertake--escape from a sunken sub. At 7:40 Hine opened the sea valves and began slowly flooding the compartment. He lowered a canvas funnel, big enough for one man to get through. At the top of the funnel was a hatch, opening outside the vessel. The bottom of the funnel was under the surface of the water in the compartment.

The rising water in the compartment increased pressure. The men had to wait until the pressure inside approximately equaled that of the sea outside--otherwise, when the hatch was opened, the sea would rush in upon them. This process took 30 minutes.

Fun & Songs. As the water rose, the men floated to the top of the compartment and clung to overhead beams. The air was hot and foul. Somebody cracked: "This is one thing you can't blame on the Socialist government," and somebody laughed. Somebody started a song; the rest joined in. Afterwards, Cook Ray Fry said: "It didn't seem long, because everyone laughed and joked as if they were in the local [pub]. But you felt bad inside."

At 8:10 the men began going out the hatch. They had to dive down toward the floor, crawl into the canvas funnel and up through the hatch. "We formed a queue as though we were waiting for a bus," said one survivor. The trip to the surface took 40 seconds. After he got outside, Engine Room Artificer Frank Mossman was snagged by a piece of deck rigging. "I was caught on it for about a minute, but it seemed an eternity," he said.

Finally only Chief Hine and Ed Buckingham were left. Hine, as senior, was the last to leave the ship. They met on the surface two minutes later. Buckingham recalled: "One minute we were swimming together, and the next he was being swept away from me." Told that Hine had almost certainly died, Buckingham said: "We were great friends."

"No Idea." All this time, the Admiralty did not know that the Truculent had been lost. Divina's Captain Hammer-berg explained: "I had no idea we had struck a submarine. We all thought it was some kind of surface vessel and that there would be survivors swimming in the water. We did what I considered--and still consider--the proper thing. We launched a lifeboat and threw out life belts. The survivors we did pick up were not in any fit state to talk and we continued rescue operations without realizing that it was a submarine we had hit."

At 8:15, when the first men from the engine room hatch were coming to the surface, the Admiralty got the word. Destroyers, frigates, tugs, tenders and salvage ships hurried to the scene. One Lancaster bomber, carrying divers to the wreck, crashed; five men died, indirectly adding to the toll.

At 4:30 next morning a tug spotted the Truculent's emergency marker buoy. The web-booted, goggled divers, known in the service as "frogmen," battled all morning to reach the hull of the sub. At 12:25 p.m., the frogmen sent up a chilling message: "No signals can be heard."

Not since June 1939, when H.M. Submarine Thetis went down in the Mersey estuary below Liverpool with a loss of 99 lives, had the Royal Navy suffered such a peacetime tragedy. Of the 79 aboard the Truculent only 15 had been saved. Ten bodies were discovered floating in the estuary on Friday. Most of the 54 missing had probably escaped from the sub and had been dragged by the tide out to sea.

"The Admiralty Regrets ..." All day Sam Hine's wife Maud waited at the Chatham Navy Dock gates. "I've been through all this before," she said cheerfully. "In 1942 my husband's submarine was sunk. I waited four months for news. Then a telegram came telling me he was a prisoner."

This time, Maud Hine's telegram brought no good news. At 6 p.m. Friday, just 23 hours after the crash, the Admiralty announced: ". . . No hope can now be entertained that there will be any further survivors from H.M. Submarine Truculent." King George sent a message to the Admiralty: "Please convey to the next of kin of all those who have lost their lives the deep sympathy of the Queen and myself."

*An oxygen breathing bag hung from the neck. A hose connects it with a mouthpiece firmly encasing the mouth.

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