HMS Grampus (S04): Three Weeks Hunting for Holes in the Polar Ice

Built at Birkenhead

HMS Grampus was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, launched on 30 May 1957 and commissioned on 19 December 1958, a Porpoise-class submarine displacing 2,080 tons on the surface and 2,450 tons submerged, capable of 17 knots submerged.

Three Weeks Under the Ice

Grampus came back to Gosport on 1 April 1963 with her hull lightly damaged, after spending three demanding weeks beneath the polar icecap, searching for the gaps and thin patches, known as polynyas, that would allow a submarine to surface safely through Arctic ice, exactly the kind of specialised, high-stakes navigation that defined Cold War submarine operations in northern waters.

She was commanded the following year by Lieutenant-Commander J.F. Woodward, who would go on to a distinguished later career.

A Tangle With a French Trawler

On 11 January 1968, Grampus became entangled in the nets of the French trawler Fomalhaut in the English Channel, an unglamorous but particularly hazardous hazard of submarine life in busy fishing waters, and surfaced so the two crews could spend the best part of three hours working the nets free together.

She went on to take part in joint oceanographic operations with the American submarine USS Tigrone in 1972, and paid a visit to Funchal in Madeira that February.

A Final Role as a Target

Rather than ending her days at the breaker's yard, HMS Grampus sank on 18 September 1980 in Loch Fyne while under tow as a sonar target, settling upright on the loch bed at a depth of 120 metres, an unusual but oddly fitting final chapter for a submarine that had spent so much of her career hunting and being hunted beneath the waves.