H.M.S. Unseen

And at 1800 on the dot, he hit the phone to the captain, Second Submarine Squadron (SM2), to report the overdue Surfacing Signal — standard Submarine Safety Instructions (Allied Tactical Publication ATP 10). Doug Roper knew that a disaster must be considered a possibility.

The captain instantly put into operation Comcheck, a procedure that effectively means, Hey, Unseen, haven’t you forgotten something? But in fact it alerted all Royal Navy ships in the area that a communication was urgently required with Unseen. The signal from the Second Submarine Squadron was regarded as sufficiently important for a copy to be relayed to the Flag Officer Submarines in Northwood, 250 miles away in West London.

Thirty minutes later nothing had been heard, and it was almost impossible that the submarine had not yet found some way to communicate her safety. By 1835, Captain Charles Moss was in the Staff Office. So was Lt. Commander Roger Martin. The mood was somber. The Royal Navy had not lost a submarine since the diesel- electric A-Class boat, Affray, had gone down in the Channel in April 1951. Everyone knew it had taken months to find her.

At 1900, they went to the next phase, SUBLOOK, because each of the four officers in the room knew that if Unseen was on the surface, someone should have reported in. If she was dived and anyone had survived, they’d have released the expendable communications buoys, or the main indicator buoys, situated one forward, one aft. If anyone had gotten out, their locator beacons should have been picked up. But not a word had been heard, and she was an hour overdue. The worst was feared. It always is when they issue SUBLOOK.

Because this is a very big word in the Navy. It comes in capital letters, a serious message that will alert other nations, and rescue Coordination Centers all around the English Channel. It also alerts the RN Casualty Organization and the Public Relations network. We are very much afraid we have lost a submarine, NO SHIT.

The word whipped around the base that Unseen was missing. Four available guided-missile frigates moored alongside in Devonport were ordered out to the exercise area. Royal Navy warships were signaled to stop whatever it was they were doing and start looking and listening. The senior officer out there, Captain Mike Fuller in the 4,000-ton Type-42 destroyer Exeter was ordered to coordinate a methodical search of the area. Two maritime patrol aircraft, big RN Nimrods, were diverted to search the waters south of Plymouth Sound, under Captain Fuller’s control.

The weather was deteriorating. With the fading light of that early-spring evening, the breeze was backing southwest, and a gale-force wind was gusting off the Atlantic straight up the English Channel. The sea was rougher than it had been for a week, and Captain Fuller, on the bridge of Exeter, was extremely concerned the search would become impossible if sea conditions worsened much more.

Back in the Staff Office, Lt. Commander Doug Roper, as the duty officer, was dealing with the minute-by- minute reports coming in. But he also could see the looks of real concern on the faces of Roger Martin and Charles Moss. He could hear the captain saying, “Time is of the absolute essence. The quicker we find it, the better our chances of getting any survivors off.”

All four men knew that a major accident seemed certain, but that Bill Colley and his men might still be on board, on the bottom somewhere, their air supply strictly limited, some men possibly injured, waiting to escape when the searchers finally arrived. All submariners realize there’s no point just getting out and floating up into a raging, empty sea, where death is just about inevitable. The trick is to float up into the arms of your rescuers, who will haul you out, administer first aid, and get you into the ship’s hospital, where they can at least treat hypothermia and possibly the “bends” and CO₂ poisoning.

By 2130 two of the frigates were working with active sonars, checking out known wrecks and bottom contacts, to see if a new one had appeared. Captain Moss had ordered two minesweepers into the area because their sonars are particularly well suited to wreck searches. In the next twenty minutes they began scanning the bottom of the English Channel, trying to sift out a new wreck from the thousands of others that had been there since World War II. In Captain Fuller’s destroyer, and in the four frigates, the navigation officers pored over charts detailing almost all of the wrecks on the floor of the Channel. Commander Rob Willmot, in the 4,200-ton Duke-Class Type-23 Portland, thought they had something out on the western edge of the “square.” It was not marked as a known wreck, and, but for the sea conditions, he was ready to send down two divers and a TV camera to have a closer look.

However, despite an evening full of false hopes, and false alarms, no one had anything firm. At midnight Captain Moss issued the fateful SUBMISS Signal, six hours after Unseen’s Diving Signal expired. There was now in place a full-scale, coordinated, international search, which would continue until the submarine was found. In the hard-edged mind of the Royal Navy, submarines do not just disappear. They might go missing, because they have sunk, or even blown up, or even been blown up. Nonetheless, the submarine, or its wreckage, had to be somewhere.

The critical issue was, had Unseen left her area of operations? Why on earth should she have left it? Bad navigation? Incorrect tidal calculations? Sheer carelessness? Not very likely. But the specter of the Affray still haunted the Royal Navy submarine operators — because that 1,800-tonner out of Portsmouth on a training exercise, full of men just in from the surface Navy, was finally found on the bottom a long way outside her allocated area, right down by the Hurd Deep, off the Channel Island of Alderney, weeks after any hope of survivors had disappeared.

Shortly after midnight the next of kin of the four British Sea Riders were informed. A communication was drafted to the Brazilian Navy Headquarters in Rio de Janeiro detailing the men who were on board. The press were informed very quickly, because that way they could be controlled a little more, rather than having them pick something up on the Naval networks and start off by asking, Are You Trying To Keep This A Secret?

Nonetheless everyone knew the press would do its worst, dragging up every Royal Navy submarine that had ever been lost, starting with Affray, then going back a year to January 1950, when Truculent collided with a merchant ship and sank in the Thames Estuary, then moving back to June 1, 1939, when the Thetis went down off Birkenhead. It was all more than half a century ago, but still it was sufficient for the media, apparently, to conclude that submarines are not much better than iron coffins. At least that’s how the news was presented by the time the headline writers had gone to work. Should Our Bravest Young Men Be Subjected To This Carelessness?

At 1945 (EDT) the news reached the office of the director of National Security in Fort Meade, Maryland, and Admiral George Morris was very thoughtful. He read the brief details over and looked at a chart on one of the computer screens, tapping a button that drew it in closer, then took in a much larger area. Out of Plymouth, eh? Long time since the Brits lost a submarine. Wonder what happened?

Ten minutes later he had reached Admiral Morgan at the White House, still in his office, and interested, as ever, in anything to do with submarines.

“How long’s it been missing, George?”

“Seven or eight hours since its Surfacing Signal was due.”

“I don’t mean that. How long since they heard from it?”

“They got a Check Report in at 0700 their time. ’Bout twelve hours before her Diving Signal expired.”

“Hmmmm. Where was she?”

“Twenty miles off Plymouth Sound.”

“They gotta lot of ships out there searching?”

“Guess so. They’ve had sonars working the bottom of the ocean for several hours, but no one’s found anything.”

“Ocean?” replied the old blue-water submariner. “That’s not a goddamned ocean, it’s some kind of a fucking mudflat. The English Channel’s only about 20 feet deep. I bet the fucking periscope’s sticking out of the water! Incompetent Brits. Couldn’t find an elephant in a chicken coop.”

George Morris laughed politely. “Anyway, they have found literally nothing. No buoys, no signals, no wreckage, no oil slick, no survivors. Damn thing just vanished off the face of the ocean. Sorry, Arnold…off the face of the mudflat.”

Admiral Morgan chuckled. “They asked us for help yet?”