The Trawlers seem to look on mines as more or less fairplay. But with the torpedo it is otherwise. A Yarmouth man lay on his hatch, his gear neatly stowed away below, and told me that another Yarmouth boat had “gone up,” with all hands except one. “‘Twas a submarine. Not a mine,” said he. “They never gave our boys no chance. Na! She was a Yarmouth boat -we knew ‘em all. They never gave the boys no chance.”
Apparently, the skimmers would rather have been blown up by a mine than torpedoed by a submarine. We’ve found that this ingrained fear still exists and has often worked to our benefit.
Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson VC, the Controller of the Royal Navy, stated in 1901 that, “Submarines are underhand, unfair and damned un-English. The crews of all submarines captured should be treated as pirates and hanged”.
Lieutenant Commander (later Admiral Sir) Max Horton first flew the Jolly Roger-two flags in fact- on return to harbour after sinking the German cruiser Hela and the destroyer S-116 in 1914; but the Black Flag of old-time pirates was not generally flown by submarines, to show their successes, until the Second World War.
The good crew of the G.S. PATIENCE, though, prefer to exemplify the lawless tradition of the flag, and concur with the good Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson’s impression of the submarine’s potential.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find this listing on the Australian Ebay, so it may have been pulled or sold since this article was originally posted on The Australian online newspaper. Still, we’re keeping our eyes open.
More info from the article (WARNING: sadness and shattered dreams ahead):
The story behind the bizarre firesale of this Cold War warrior, a prized piece of the nation’s military heritage, is far from festive. The forced sale of the Otama — the first RAN submarine offered on eBay — has broken the heart of the man who dreamed the vessel would one day restore the flagging fortunes of his home town of Hastings on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.
Max Bryant, president of the Western Port Oberon Association, said: “I’ve put 11 years of work into this, and all we have had is disappointment.”
Bought from the federal government in 2001 for $50,000, the decommissioned Otama was to take pride of place on the Hastings foreshore, providing an all-year tourist attraction for the small industrial town.
It was to be a noble end for the last of the Oberon Class boats, which spent much of its life from 1978 to 2000 conducting dangerous top-secret surveillance missions against Soviet targets off the coast of Vietnam.
Instead, Otama is fast rusting away in the waters of Western Port Bay, the victim of planning delays and false promises by Victorian government officials over seven years.
Update: Found the Ebay listing and it looks like it was either changed since The Australian story was published or the original story was factually deficient. The Ebay listing, now closed, seems to be requesting donations for the Hastings Cerberus Maritime Memorial Center.
Regardless, punishment for this miscommunication is in order. The guilty parties will be identified and indifferent calibrations performed.
In recent months at least 25 ships of British registry have been attacked in the Mediterranean, numerous Russian ships have been sunk, French merchantmen have been fired on. Last week the British destroyer Havock was also on Mediterranean patrol, off Alicante. Shooting past her went the long white wake of a submarine torpedo. Out crackled a message for help and whooshing overboard went a cylindrical depth charge, then another and another till seven had geysered salt water up into the air. The destroyer Hasty zipped at 38 knots to the rescue of her sister ship, but by the time she got there the surface of the sea was iridescent with oil. The mystery submarine had apparently been sunk. Two days later the British tanker Woodford was sunk by two torpedoes fired at point-blank range from a submarine whose identifying number had been crudely painted out.
The released Soviet sub heads for port and hard questions
The antiquated gray submarine was towed part of the way down the channel it had navigated on its own ten days before. Finally it cast off. Then, joining the flotilla of naval vessels hovering anxiously beyond the twelve-nautical-mi. limit, Soviet “Whiskey”-class submarine No. 137 headed for its home base at Baltiysk, near the port of Kaliningrad. So ended, peacefully enough, the diplomatic uproar that began when Sweden discovered the sub on a reef in a restricted military zone only nine miles from Karlskrona, an ultrasensitive naval base on the Baltic Sea.
Stumbled across this. Take the quiz and get a little write-up with your pirate name. Good for killing time when not standing watch (only when we’re at periscope depth with the internet mast raised, of course).
My pirate name is:
Bloody Tom Flint
Every pirate lives for something different. For some, it’s the open sea. For others (the masochists), it’s the food. For you, it’s definitely the fighting. Like the rock flint, you’re hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you’re easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!
