HMS Tabard (P342): A Quarter of a Million Miles Without a War

Constructed at Greenock, Too Late for War

HMS Tabard was built by Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Greenock, her construction beginning on 6 September 1944, launched on 21 November 1945 and commissioned on 25 June 1946 under Lieutenant James Newenham Elliott, a third-group T-class submarine completed too late to see any wartime service.

A Rescue and a Royal Escort

Tabard's peacetime career proved particularly varied. She took part in Operation Two Step training exercises in March 1949, escorted Admiral Sir Arthur Power to Saudi Arabia in January 1950, and on 18 December 1950 rescued a pilot, Roi Wilson, and his observer James Hawker after their Fairey Firefly ditched at sea, a rare moment of direct life-saving for a submarine crew.

In 1950 she also underwent extensive modification, with her hull lengthened by 20 feet and streamlined to improve her underwater performance.

Eight Years With the Australian Fleet

From 1960 to 1968, Tabard served with Australia's 4th Submarine Squadron, refitting at Cockatoo Island in 1961-62 and again in 1964-65, a long overseas posting during which she was involved in a collision with HMAS Queenborough on 8 May 1963 that damaged her fin.

In February 1964 she took part in anti-submarine exercises alongside HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager, mere hours before those two Australian vessels were involved in the tragic collision that claimed 82 lives, a sobering proximity to one of Australia's worst peacetime naval disasters even though Tabard herself played no part in it.

A Long Retirement and the End

Tabard was permanently moored as a static training submarine at HMS Dolphin from 1969 until 1974, having covered some 253,349 miles across two years in the Mediterranean and eight years in Australian waters. She was finally sold for scrap on 2 January 1974, arriving at the breakers on 14 March that year, closing out a career built entirely in peacetime yet no less eventful for it.