HMS Torbay (N79): A Victoria Cross Earned in Corfu Harbour

The Build: Chatham

HMS Torbay was built at Chatham Dockyard, launched on 9 April 1940 and commissioned on 14 January 1941 under Lieutenant Commander Anthony Cecil Capel Miers, a T-class submarine of 1,090 tons surfaced displacement that went on to compile one of the more formidable, and more controversial, combat records of any British submarine in the Mediterranean.

A Formidable Tally

Over the course of her Mediterranean service, Torbay sank 17 merchant ships totalling some 38,000 tons, five warships including the Italian submarine Jantina, and 24 sailing vessels, alongside torpedoing and damaging the French tanker Alberta and the Italian oiler Strombo, and conducting special operations that included landing commando teams behind enemy lines in Libya.

The Corfu Harbour Raid

Torbay's most celebrated action came on 4 March 1942, when Miers took her into Corfu Harbour itself and fired torpedoes at a destroyer and two 5,000-ton transport ships, scoring hits on the supply vessels before withstanding some 40 depth charges during his withdrawal, a daring piece of submarine handling that earned him the Victoria Cross.

A Difficult Chapter

Torbay's record cannot honestly be told without acknowledging a properly troubling episode.

In July 1941, Miers is recorded, in his own official logs, as having ordered his crew to fire on enemy survivors swimming in the water after a ship had been sunk, an action that drew a formal reprimand at the time and that stands today as a serious and disputed stain on an otherwise celebrated record, one that later historians have continued to debate in the context of the wartime pressures and conventions of submarine warfare in the Mediterranean.

The End of Her Service

Torbay went on to serve in the Pacific Far East before the war's end, and was sold for breaking on 19 December 1945, scrapped at Briton Ferry in Wales in March 1947, bringing to a close the career of a submarine whose story combines genuine heroism with an episode that deserves to be remembered honestly rather than airbrushed away.