HMS Sturgeon (73S): Scoring Britain's First Submarine Kill of the War

Chatham-Built

HMS Sturgeon was built at Chatham Dockyard, launched on 8 January 1932 and entered service on 27 February 1933, a first-batch S-class submarine of 640 tons surfaced displacement and 187 feet in length, crewed by 38 officers and ratings.

An Awkward Start

Sturgeon's war began with an embarrassing near-miss rather than a glorious victory: on 14 September 1939 she accidentally discharged three torpedoes at HMS Swordfish, a sister S-class boat also built at Chatham, fortunately without hitting her, an alarming reminder of how dangerous submarine operations could be even without the enemy's help.

The First British Submarine Success of the War

Sturgeon soon put that mishap behind her. On 20 November 1939, under Lieutenant G. D. A. Gregory, she torpedoed and sank the German anti-submarine trawler V209, also known as Gauleiter Telschow, the very first submarine success recorded by any British boat in the Second World War.

She went on to sink the German troop transport Pionier in September 1940, and engaged the German submarines U-23 and U-43 without securing hits, adding some 10,000 tons of shipping sunk in the North Sea and off Norway to her tally between 1940 and 1942 under her later commander, Lieutenant Commander D. St. Clair-Ford.

The Sole Survivor of Her Sisters

Of the four S-class submarines built at Chatham in her batch, Sturgeon was the only one to survive the war.

She was lent to the Royal Netherlands Navy on 14 October 1943 and served under the name Zeehond until the Dutch decommissioned her in September 1945, before returning to British control and finally being scrapped at Granton, Scotland, in 1947, a long and eventful career for a boat that had started it all with a friendly-fire scare.