HMS Regent (N41): A Wreck Misidentified for Fifty Years

One of Four Rainbow-Class Boats

HMS Regent was one of just four Rainbow-class submarines built for the Royal Navy, and went on to serve through the demanding Mediterranean submarine campaign of the Second World War.

Lost to a Mine Off Brindisi

HMS Regent was lost on 18 April 1943, striking a mine near Brindisi in Italy, an explosion that triggered a secondary detonation in her ammunition storage that, in the stark words of researchers who later studied the wreck, literally gutted the boat.

In the days that followed, the bodies of four sailors were recovered from coastal locations near Brindisi, their uniforms identifying them as British submariners, and they were later laid to rest at the Bari War Cemetery, a loss that deserves to be remembered with the gravity it warrants.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

For decades, the story of Regent's final resting place remained notably confused.

A research team in the 1990s believed they had located her wreck in the Apulia region near Barletta, roughly fifty years after her loss, but the Italian explorer Fabio Bisciotti and his team later determined that this earlier find was in fact the Italian submarine Giovanni Bausan, which had been repurposed as an oil depot and subsequently destroyed by American forces.

Bisciotti's team went on to locate what they believe is the true wreck of HMS Regent near Brindisi at a depth of around 75 metres, an 87-metre hull bearing the six torpedo tubes and distinctive cable-cutting rostrum unique to British R-class submarine design, finally bringing a measure of clarity to a mystery that had persisted for the better part of a century.