HMS Spirit (P245): A Japanese Q-Ship in the Java Sea and a Badge for Old Grog

Up Spirits

HMS Spirit was ordered from Cammell Laird at Birkenhead on 20 December 1941, one of the third group of S Class submarines. She was laid down on 27 October 1942, launched on 20 July 1943 and commissioned on 25 October 1943.

Her name could only mean one thing to a sailor. "Up Spirits" was the call that brought the daily rum ration up from below, and her official badge, approved in June 1944, carried the black fret from the arms of Admiral Edward Vernon, nicknamed "Old Grog" after his grogram cloak, who in 1740 ordered that the men's rum should be watered and so gave the Navy the word grog.

There was an unofficial badge as well: a grog tub. Her captain for most of her war was Lieutenant Anthony Langridge.

The photograph was taken in October 1943 as she made her way along the Mersey on completion, with her number painted in white on her conning tower, her gun trained ahead and the grey river and misty sky giving the scene a wartime stillness.

To the Indian Ocean

She made a work-up patrol in the Norwegian Sea from Lerwick in January 1944 and a patrol off Vigo on her way out to Gibraltar in April. She passed through the Suez Canal on 6 May and joined the submarines at Trincomalee in Ceylon, and on 23 June she sailed for her first patrol, off the north coast of Sumatra.

She was escorted out of harbour by the Italian sloop Eritrea, now fighting on the Allied side. On 29 June she surfaced to fight a group of Japanese landing craft, each towing another, but their return fire came so close after her third round that she had to dive.

Off Sabang a few days later she was hunted by a submarine chaser and aircraft, and on 9 July she surfaced in front of a small tanker leaving the anchorage at Ulee Lhoe and left it in flames from stem to stern. A small fire in her battery after she returned meant a spell at Colombo for repairs.

Siam and the Barracuda Crew

In September she patrolled the west coast of Siam, where she sank three junks on 14 September and took two prisoners. That month the Eastern Fleet sent its carriers Victorious and Indomitable, with the battleship Howe and the cruiser Cumberland, to strike the railway workshops at Sigli in northern Sumatra, and Spirit was stationed off the coast on air-sea rescue duty.

On 18 September she picked up the three crew of a Barracuda torpedo bomber that had come down in the sea. The next day she sank a large junk at anchor in a bay in the Nicobar Islands.

In October Langridge fell ill, and Lieutenant Anthony Catlow took her out for a patrol off the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. On 12 November he fired two torpedoes at a coastal tanker lying off Car Nicobar with an escort.

The escort had seen him and was coming at speed as he fired, and Spirit went deep to fifteen depth charges, thirteen of them very close. The next morning Catlow sighted what looked like the same escort, decided, as he put it, to "get even", surfaced and opened fire from 7,500 yards.

He hit her at least once and set her on fire, knocking out her forward gun, before his own gun jammed and he dived. The escort did not counter-attack; Catlow guessed, probably rightly, that she had used up her depth charges the day before. Catlow later commanded Trump.

The Java Sea

At the end of 1944 Spirit moved to Fremantle in Western Australia, with Langridge back in command, and from there she made two patrols into the Java Sea through the Lombok Strait. On 22 January 1945 she sighted a small grey coaster with a suspicious white canvas screen aft, surfaced and opened fire from 4,000 yards.

The coaster's machine gun answered and then fell silent, and within ten minutes the ship was a shambles but refused to sink. When Spirit came alongside to place a demolition charge her crew saw what the canvas had been hiding: a Bofors gun.

The coaster also carried a machine gun on her forecastle, two depth charges aft and a wireless set. She was the Ryushin Maru, and she was apparently a decoy, a Japanese Q-ship of the kind the British had used against the U-boats in the First World War.

Her crew refused to be rescued, and the charge sent her to the bottom. Spirit then went after a second small vessel and sank that too.

On 14 March, off Masalembo Island, she found a coaster at anchor among a group of schooners. Her torpedo ran underneath, so she surfaced 1,000 yards away and set the ship ablaze with her gun; this was the Ryuho Maru. Some forty Japanese were in the water, and most refused to be picked up, though two were taken aboard.

That evening she fired five torpedoes at a 1,200-ton merchant ship and a sea truck lying close inshore, but one ran right, one ran left, two ran under and the fifth was not seen, and the escort drove her down with depth charges that did minor damage. She returned to Fremantle on 27 March.

After the War

Spirit came home in the summer and began a refit at Blyth in July 1945, and Lieutenant Richard Sallis took over from Langridge in August. She was broken up by Thos. W. Ward at Grays in Essex in July 1950. Spark and Solent were among the other S boats that worked the Java Sea from Fremantle in 1945.