Information from Wrecks of Liverpool Bay by C. Michael. (with permission) [Resurgam section written before wreck was discovered; Wrecks of Liverpool Bay Volume II contains this information]
In the age of steam, the construction of a steam powered submarine was a challenge since burning coal consumes the oxygen in the air needed to breathe. The first successful vessel was built in Birkenhead from the design of a Liverpool inventor, the Reverend George Garrett. The Resurgam was tested in the docks and then she reached Rhyl from Liverpool under her own power and partly submerged. There was considerable naval interest in such a vessel and she was being taken by sea to Portsmouth to be demonstrated to the Navy when she was lost in Liverpool Bay. There was no loss of life.
Because she was lost while under tow, her precise location is unknown. Despite considerable efforts, the historic wreck has not been located. I give what guidance I can as to her probable whereabouts. She is a relatively small size and it could well be that her wreck is completely sanded in. A thorough search is nevertheless worth pursuing. It would be of great historical interest to recover her remains - she was the first powered submarine.
A very different submarine tragedy occurred just before the Second World War. The Thetis was undergoing acceptance trials in Liverpool Bay. She took water on board and ended up with her bow on the seabed with her stern clear of the surface. Only four of her crew managed to escape and the vessel was eventually beached on Anglesey. She was salvaged and refitted and renamed the Thunderbolt - so no wreckage exists in Liverpool Bay.
Submarine 30 tons displacement, 45 ft long, 9 ft beam.
Built: Cochrane & Co., Britannia Iron Works, Birkenhead 1879.
Engines: Steam Lamm engine, 1 boiler, 1 screw.
Date of wreck: 25 February 1880.
Reverend George Garrett was very much the stereotype of a Victorian inventor and entrepreneur. He had full confidence in himself and his ideas. One of his innovations was a submarine. The main problem to be overcome was that of underwater propulsion, since steam power involved burning coal which used up the oxygen in the air. The Lamm engine relied on a store of compressed steam to give a limited underwater range - of 12 miles according to Garrett. The prototype was a small vessel with hardly room for her crew of three. Nevertheless she was the first manned submarine with engines. Her first sea trials took her as far as Rhyl. A delightful incident occurred en route when the intrepid submariners surfaced to get their bearings. They came up close to a sailing ship and asked directions. The Captain was amazed, more so when told they had been under his boat for some hours. The Captain pronounced: "Well, you are the three biggest fools I have ever met".
At Rhyl she was overhauled and Garrett bought a steam yacht, the Elfin, to accompany her. The intention was to take the Resurgam to Portsmouth to demonstrate her to the Navy. The submarine and yacht left Rhyl at 10 pm on 24 February 1880. The weather got worse as they proceeded west. Off Great Ormes Head, the captain of the Elfin had to ask the crew of the Resurgam for help on the Elfin. A boat was sent to bring them aboard and George Price, the engineer from the Resurgam, went below to help mend the pumps. The Elfin took the Resurgam in tow. A gale developed which prevented the crew from returning to the Resurgam. They towed her through the night but since her conning tower hatch could not be closed from outside, she took water on board in the rough seas. This increased her weight and the next morning at 10 am the hawser parted. She then broke free and eventually sank.
The disaster did not end there. The Elfin took shelter in the Dee and anchored off Mostyn. The wind changed and her anchor chains broke. The Elfin was adrift and needed assistance. The Iron King came to the rescue but she rammed the Elfin making her a total loss. Nobody was killed in this sequence of nautical disasters. Garrett went to Liverpool to try and get help to look for the Resurgam, but the bad weather continued and no vessel was prepared to venture out.
The search for the wreck of the Resurgam has fascinated many people. One problem is that she was tiny - just 45 feet long and 30 tons. She was presumably heavily built, being a pressure vessel, but she could be easily engulfed in a shifting sandbank. The other problem is that it is not known exactly where she parted company with her escort and how long she drifted before sinking. She was lost at 10 am on Wednesday 25 February 1880 and high water was at 11.10 am that day. The tidal current would tend to take her west of her position when the tow parted. The Elfin had her in tow off Great Ormes Head and had lost her by the time she was herself wrecked on Salisbury Middle Bank in the Dee Estuary. This leaves a lot of sea.
Triton Class Submarine 1095 tons displacement, 240 ft long.
Built: Cammell Laird, Birkenhead 1939.
Date of wreck: 2 June 1939.
In 1939 with the threat of war in Europe growing stronger, there was pressure to build up Britain's naval strength. In particular submarines were to be brought into service as fast as possible. The Thetis was the first of a new class of submarines which was being built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead. She was ready for acceptance trials and it was decided to hold these nearby in Liverpool Bay. As well as her normal naval crew of about 50, she had Admiralty observers, shipyard personnel, 2 caterers and a Mersey pilot aboard. In total she carried 103 persons for her first diving trials in Liverpool Bay on 1 June 1939. These diving trials were expected to be very safe and uncomplicated. Perhaps for this reason, none of the extra persons accepted the invitation of her commander to disembark to her escorting surface vessel before diving commenced.
She was under the command of Lt.-Commander Bolus. The chief Admiralty observer was Captain Oram who was to oversee the tests. At 1.30 pm, when she was about 13 miles north of Llandudno, the crew prepared her for diving. Problems were apparent with her buoyancy. Even after using the auxiliary ballast tanks, she was light at the bow. The possibility of filling some of the forward torpedo tubes with water was then discussed. There were 6 torpedo tubes and tubes 5 and 6 were the lowest and opened under water even when the submarine was on the surface. There was some uncertainty as to whether these two tubes were empty or full of water when the Thetis was trimmed at Birkenhead. The forward part of the submarine was the responsibility of Lt. Frederick Woods. He was assigned to check on the state of these tubes.
Lt. Woods opened the test cocks on the rear doors of the torpedo tubes to see if there was water inside. No water came from the test cock of number 5 tube so he then opened the rear door of this tube to check for possible leaks. The tube was in fact full of water and, moreover, the bow cover was also open so that the tube was fully open to the sea. One of the main points raised in the inquiry was that Lt. Woods should have made sure that the bow cover was closed before opening the rear door to the torpedo tube. The test cock was subsequently found to have been blocked by paint - although a reamer was supplied to clear out the test cock should it be blocked.
On opening the rear door, a great pressure of water forced it open so it could not be shut again. Thinking that the torpedo tube itself must be fractured, Lt. Woods did not try to shut the bow cap, but ordered the front compartment to be isolated. Here again problems arose. The submarine was now sloping downward and the bulkhead door was hinged forward. It had to be pulled upwards to close it and this the men could not manage. Water was pouring in and the lights failed. Furniture was falling down on them. The men had to scramble back to close the next bulkhead door which they were able to secure safely. The front part of the submarine took on board a lot of water. Indeed the front two compartments became completely flooded. The weight of the water pushed her bow to the sea bed. Even by blowing the other ballast tanks she remained with her nose on the bottom. Running the engines in reverse did not help. She gradually settled to a more even keel - lying on the bottom at 40 metres below the surface and at a slope of only 6°.
Captain Oram and Lt.-Commander Bolus conferred as to the best course of action. They released an indicator buoy and a smoke candle to alert the surface escort of their problem. Attempts were made to rid the front section of water. This involved sending in men wearing Davis breathing apparatus to try and close the rear door of torpedo tube 5. This was a very ambitious plan since two bulkheads had to be passed first and then the door closed and lever operated to hold it shut. The Davis breathing apparatus was designed for men ascending directly to the surface and was unsuited to manoeuvering in a confined space at 40 metres depth. The chance of succeeding and of returning alive was small. Nevertheless Lt. Woods and two volunteers tried but they could not stand the strain of the pressure.
The submarine had an escape hatch and carried Davis breathing apparatus sets. The escape procedure entailed entering a chamber which was first closed and then flooded. When the pressure was equalised, the top hatch to the outside could be raised and the men could pass through. The Davis equipment allowed them to breathe and gave them sufficient buoyancy to take them swiftly to the surface. Usually two men at a time entered the chamber. It was difficult for trained men to use under ideal conditions but in a dark, slippery, sloping submarine the procedure was frightening.
In any case, it was not sensible to use this means of escape until there was a sign that surface help was standing by. It was decided that senior officers should be the first to leave to help organise the rescue. The only other recourse of the trapped men was to pump out as much water and oil as possible to lighten the vessel so she might regain the surface. Gradually the pumping took effect until the stern remained bobbing above the waves with the whole vessel tilted at 40° to the horizontal since she was in water less deep than her length.
Her surface escort was a Liverpool tug Grebecock which carried a naval liaison officer, Lt. Coltart, and telegraphist. The primary function of the escort was to warn other vessels to keep clear of the submarine when it was submerged. The Grebecock was ordered to stand by half a mile off when the submarine was ready to dive. They saw the Thetis proceed to the west on the surface for a long time and then suddenly plunge below the surface at 2.58. Lt. Coltart did not realise immediately that anything was amiss. The tug tried to maintain station by steaming into the tide. When the Thetis did not reappear as planned, they sent a radio message to submarine command at Fort Blockhouse to ask the expected total time of the dive. Receiving no answer, Lt. Coltart ordered the tug to anchor. She was in 40 metres and the anchor chain was of insufficient length. There was a delay of an hour while they roped two segments of chain together. It turned out subsequently that they were anchored about 4 miles WNW from the Thetis.
Alerted by Fort Blockhouse, the destroyer HMS Brazen arrived at
9 pm and commenced a search for the missing submarine. Since the
Grebecock was out of position, the search to the west of her position
was not successful. Further confusion came from several aircraft
reports of buoys which proved to be irrelevant. Even though the
Finally at 7.50 am on the morning of 2 June, the Brazen searched
east of the Grebecock and sighted the stern of the Thetis
protruding 6 metres from the surface. This remarkable result had been
achieved by the steady pumping of the Cammell Laird workers aboard.
The air quality aboard was deteriorating. When the sound signal from
the Brazen was heard, Captain Oram and Lt. Woods used the escape
hatch to reach the surface to help organise the rescue. At this time
the escape hatch was not particularly far underwater and the surface
rescuers expected that many would be able to escape. An
experiment was then made to send up four men together but all four
were drowned. It took some effort in the dark, sloping, slippery
conditions to remove the bodies. Only two more men successfully used
the escape hatch: stoker Arnold and engine fitter Shaw surfaced at
10 am. They confirmed that the remaining men on board were suffering
from the build up of carbon dioxide in the air.
The MDHB salvage vessel Vigilant joined in the rescue attempt
and passed a wire hawser under the stern of the Thetis. Strenuous
attempts were made to cut a hole in her stern to let men out but this
proved too difficult from a small boat bobbing close by. The submarine
weighed over 1000 tons and was too heavy to be lifted off the seabed.
The rising tide caused the wire hawser to break at 3.10 pm. The
submarine sank from view with the remaining men still inside. She was
visited by a diver during the night who reported that he thought he
heard faint tapping. A later dive did not confirm this and the rescue
operation became a salvage operation.
A whole saga of poor decisions and small mistakes compounded to make
this great tragedy. The vessel had too many people on board. Her trim
was not satisfactory so that adjustments had to be made at sea. The
test cock that could show that there was indeed water in number 5
torpedo tube was blocked by bituminous paint and a reamer provided to
clear out any blockage in the test cock was not used. The bow cover
controls for all 6 torpedo tubes were set to neutral instead of
closed. There was negligence in opening the rear door of the torpedo
tube without checking that the bow cover indicators showed closed.
When water rushed in through the rear door, the bow cover was not
closed to stem the flow. Then there was failure to close
satisfactorily the first bulkhead door so that two compartments became
flooded. The arrangements for communicating with the surface escort
were inadequate. The alarm was raised belatedly by the surface escort.
The surface escort lost contact with the submarine and drifted off
station because she had inadequate anchor chains. Help from salvage
vessels was requested only later on in the rescue. An attempt to cut a
hole in the stern was left until too late.
Many men must have felt partly to blame and it must have been
agonising to realise that though the rescue boats were just feet away,
their help would be insufficient to save the men inside the stricken
vessel. For the crew inside, after having their hopes raised by sound
signals from the rescue party, the tragic end does not bear thinking
about.
Because of her great weight, the vessel could not be lifted directly.
Indeed she was eventually lifted by attaching slings to barges at low
tide, towing the barges closer to shore as the tide rose, and then
shortening the slings at the next low tide. In this way she was raised a
few metres at a time and brought to Traeth Bychan beach on the west
[sic: east]
coast of Anglesey 5 months later. Her dead were taken to Holyhead for
burial. The submarine was returned to Cammell Laird's and was
refitted as HMS Thunderbolt. She sank two German submarines and
five supply ships before being destroyed by depth charges off Sicily
in 1943 with the loss of 62 men. [Thunderbolt wreck details].