HMS Statesman (P246): Firing the Very Last Torpedo of the War

Built on the Mersey

HMS Statesman was built by Cammell Laird on the Mersey, laid down on 2 November 1942, launched on 14 September 1943 and completed on 13 December 1943, a third-group S-class submarine that would go on to serve extensively with the Eastern Fleet against Japan.

Hunting in the Malacca Strait

Between August 1944 and August 1945, Statesman, commanded first by Lieutenant Robert George Pierson Bulkeley and later by Lieutenant Ronald Max Seaburne-May, accounted for around thirty Japanese vessels totalling some 5,000 tons in the Malacca Strait and surrounding waters, including the army cargo ship Sugi Maru No.5, a mix of cargo ships, sailing vessels, trawlers, coasters and landing craft destroyed by torpedo and gunfire.

Helping Corner the Haguro

Statesman played a part in the operation that led to the sinking of the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro on 16 May 1945, spotting and helping coordinate the interception of Haguro and the destroyer Kamikaze.

During this same period, her crew rescued Lieutenant Colonel Spencer Chapman, a British Army officer who had spent years operating behind Japanese lines since the 1942 invasion, a remarkably remarkable pickup for a submarine crew more used to sinking ships than saving stranded soldiers.

The Last Shot of the War

On 18 August 1945, in the Strait of Malacca, Statesman is reputed to have fired the last torpedo of the Second World War, reportedly against a derelict wreck, a curious, almost anticlimactic footnote to close out nearly six years of submarine warfare.

She was later converted into a high-speed target boat for anti-submarine training, loaned to the French Navy as Sultane from 1952 until her return on 5 November 1959, and sold for scrapping on 3 January 1961, though her conning tower survives, preserved at Fort Southwick in Portsmouth.