HMS Spur (P265): The Last Junks of the War and a New Flag in Portugal

Late Arrival

HMS Spur was ordered from Cammell Laird at Birkenhead on 7 April 1943, one of the last of the S Class submarines. She was laid down on 1 October 1943, launched on 17 November 1944 and commissioned on 18 February 1945.

Her official badge showed two gold spurs crossed, and there was also an unofficial one: a fighting cock in silver spurs, with the motto "Acheronta movebo", "I will move hell", from Virgil. Her captain was Lieutenant Peter Beale, who had already commanded the submarine Uther and had taken Sibyl on one Aegean patrol early in 1944.

The photograph was taken by Stewart Bale of Liverpool on 10 February 1945, eight days before she commissioned. She is heading towards the camera with her pale paintwork catching the low winter sun, her ensign flying from the bridge, where several of her crew are on watch, and a line of low hills along the horizon behind her.

A Bent Bow

Her working-up in the Clyde did not go to plan. On 22 March 1945, south of the Isle of Arran, she collided with the exercise ship Jan van Gelder and damaged her bow, and at the beginning of April she had to go back into dock at Scotts of Greenock for repairs.

Later that month she was out again, serving with the old destroyer Shikari as a target for Scotsman's night attack practice. By the time she was ready to sail for the Far East the war in Europe was over. She passed through the Suez Canal on 4 July and went on to join the flotilla at Trincomalee in Ceylon.

The Malacca Strait, August 1945

On 3 August 1945 she sailed from Trincomalee for her first and only war patrol, in the Malacca Strait, where she was to work in partnership with Statesman. Statesman was held back for six days by a defect, so Spur began alone.

By that stage of the war the Japanese garrisons along the Malayan coast depended on junks and other sailing craft to move their supplies, and the British submarines hunted them with their guns, boarding parties and demolition charges.

On the afternoon of 11 August Spur sighted a sail larger than any she had yet seen. She surfaced, closed, and opened fire from 1,500 yards, and after twenty-nine rounds the two-masted vessel dipped by the bows and sank.

Her crew tried to get into two boats, which capsized, and Spur picked them up and put them aboard a fishing boat at dawn the next morning. On 13 August, between Langkawi and Penang, she sank five more. The first, a 50-ton junk carrying rice and oil, struck her mainsail and anchored after a single warning shot.

Spur's boarding party sent her crew of six away in their own boat and set a demolition charge, which failed to go off, so she was sunk with five rounds at short range. The next was a big junk of 120 tons.

On 14 August she met Statesman at last, and the same day she sank five junks with gunfire, demolition charges and fire. One of them, junk No. 1179, was carrying tobacco, tea and oil with a crew of four. In all, the submarine historians credit Spur with eleven junks on this patrol.

The next day, 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered. Spur's war had lasted twelve days, and she ended her patrol at Trincomalee on 23 August.

NRP Narval

She came home at the end of 1945, and Beale left her that December. She stayed in Royal Navy service for three more years, and in 1948 she was commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Huston Murray, who had taken Sibyl to the Far East during the war.

In November 1948 she was transferred to Portugal, which took three S boats that year, Spur, Spearhead and Saga. Spur became the NRP Narval and served the Portuguese Navy for more than twenty years until she was decommissioned in 1969.

Her sisters Sanguine and Springer found new flags of their own in the Israeli Navy.