HMS Truculent (P315): A Distinguished War, A Devastating Peace

Funded by the People of Glossop

HMS Truculent was built by Vickers-Armstrongs at Barrow and launched on 12 September 1942, funded in part by the townspeople of Glossop in Derbyshire, who raised an extraordinary £175,000 during 1942 and 1943 in support of her construction, a truly striking example of civilian effort behind a fighting submarine.

A Strong Wartime Record

Truculent sank nine enemy vessels during the war, including the German submarine U-308 in the Norwegian Sea, and took part in Operation Source, towing the midget submarine X-6 towards Norway as part of the daring plan to attack the German battleship Tirpitz. In the Far East she sank the Japanese army cargo ship Yasushima Maru and the small vessel Mantai, along with five Japanese sailing vessels.

One of her actions carries a particularly painful footnote: her sinking of the Japanese transport Harugiku Maru, a so-called hell ship, resulted in the deaths of 180 of the 720 Allied prisoners of war being transported aboard her, a tragedy of the kind that recurred all too often when submarines unknowingly attacked vessels carrying Allied captives.

The Thames Estuary Disaster

Truculent's story is forever marked by what happened after the war ended. On 12 January 1950, returning to Sheerness from post-refit sea trials out of Chatham with 61 crew and 18 dockyard workers aboard, a total of 79 men, she collided with the Swedish oil tanker Divina in the Thames Estuary after her watch officer mistakenly identified the tanker as stationary.

The collision caused catastrophic flooding and Truculent sank bow-first in 60 feet of water. Between fifty and sixty men initially survived the sinking and made their way out through escape hatches into the freezing January water, but the great majority died of exposure before they could be rescued; only ten were picked up by Divina's lifeboat.

Sixty-four men lost their lives that night, the worst peacetime submarine disaster suffered by the Royal Navy since the loss of HMS Thetis in 1939, and it deserves to be remembered with the full weight and sorrow such a loss demands.

A Lasting Legacy

A Court of Inquiry found Truculent three-quarters responsible for the collision, and an emergency fund raised some £20,000, equivalent to over half a million pounds today, for the families of those killed.

The tragedy directly led to the introduction of what became known as the Truculent light, an additional navigation light fitted to submarines to make them more visible to surface vessels at night, a safety measure born directly from this disaster that has likely prevented further tragedies ever since.

The wreck was salvaged in March 1950 and sold for scrap that May.