HMS Urtica (P83): A War Spent Entirely in Training Waters

Built at Barrow

HMS Urtica was built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, ordered on 21 May 1942, laid down on 27 April 1943, launched on 23 March 1944 and commissioned on 20 June 1944 under Lieutenant Kenneth Henry Martin, the first of three commanding officers she had in just over a year, followed by Lieutenant Ronald Max Seaburne-May, DSC, RN, from September 1944 and Lieutenant Roger Cresswell Bucknall, RN, from February 1945, a V-class submarine that would go on to have a notably unusual wartime career for a fighting boat.

No Offensive Patrols at All

Unlike almost every other submarine in this history, Urtica never conducted a single offensive war patrol.

Her entire operational period was spent conducting training exercises around Scottish waters, including the Clyde, Holy Loch, Campbeltown, Larne, Holyhead and Tobermory, taking part in torpedo trials, anti-submarine exercises with aircraft, and attack exercises alongside other vessels, exactly the kind of unglamorous, essential work that kept the wider submarine service sharp without ever putting Urtica herself in harm's way.

The End of Her Service

HMS Urtica was decommissioned in September 1945 and scrapped at Milford Haven in March 1950, closing out the career of a submarine whose record contains, by her own official history, no notable events at all, a quiet but honest footnote in a fleet otherwise dominated by dramatic patrol reports.