The Royal Navy Submarine Museum
Located on the historic Gosport waterfront across Portsmouth Harbor from the celebrated Royal Dockyard and Nelson’s HMS Victory, the RN Submarine Museum lies adjacent to the former HMS Dolphin, home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service for 100 years. When the Navy decided in 1904 that their new submarines needed a home of their own, it established Dolphin at a suitably remote location – old Fort Blockhouse, originally a Plantagenet castle at the harbor entrance. Today although HMS Dolphin has not been an operational submarine base since 1998, its hallowed precincts – including the old Wardroom, Dining Hall, and Memorial Chapel – still exert a powerful emotional pull on British submariners. To this evocative setting, the RN Submarine Museum adds a comprehensive and often-moving repository for the artifacts and traditions of the Royal Navy Submarine Service, now more than 100 years old.
The museum is the descendent of a small “Submarine Branch Collection” opened originally in 1963 and then expanded significantly 20 years later after public access was granted to the museum ship, HMS Alliance, and a new display building was dedicated in 1983. Subsequently, its collection and facilities have continued to expand, and the museum is now operated as a “registered charitable trust” under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Defense, with yearly attendance approaching 75,000 visitors. Moreover, its archives now hold over a million pages of documents, countless photographs, and 4,000 books – a resource eagerly sought after by researchers.
The largest and most prominent of the museum’s exhibits is Alliance herself, suspended on pilings over a tidal basin reminiscent of a small dry dock. Launched in 1945, too late for participation in World War II, Alliance served throughout the first half of the Cold War and was decommissioned in 1973. The 279-foot long “A”-class submarine displaced 1,385 tons on the surface and was one of 16 completed between 1945 and 1948. Visitors to the ship enter through acompanionway cut through the hull that gives access to the forward torpedo room and are taken in hand by one of several retired RN submariners, who guide them through the entire length of the submarine, including the control spaces, crew and officer accommodations, and engine room, where the two big 2,150-horsepower diesels are on full display – with sound effects.
The Royal Navy´s very first submarine
Of all the museum’s holdings, however, His Majesty’s Submarine Torpedo Boat Number 1 (Holland I), the Royal Navy’s very first submarine, is unique. Built to John Holland’s design by Vickers in 1901, only a year after the U.S. Navy established its own submarine force by acquiring his path-breaking Holland VI, the British Holland I is the only first-generation “Holland boat” surviving today. Moreover, as a scaled-up version of Holland VI – later USS Holland, SS-1 – which was neglectfully scrapped in the mid-1930s, the boat provides striking insight into the design details of John Holland’s first successful submarines and a real frisson of historical excitement climbing inside.
Only the fact that she foundered while under tow to the ship breakers in 1913 preserved Holland I from the same fate as her American namesake. Rediscovered near the fabled Eddystone Light off Plymouth in 1981, Holland I was salvaged by the Royal Navy, cleaned up, treated briefly with anti-corrosion chemicals, and put on display at the museum. Within a decade, however, the hull began to rust badly, and it became apparent that a more thorough restoration would be necessary to preserve the ship. Accordingly, the entire vessel was immersed for four years in a giant tank of sodium carbonate to leach out the chloride ions causing the deterioration. This additional treatment solved the problem, and in 2001, Holland I was put back on display in its own glass-walled, climate-controlled building, built and paid for as a Heritage Lottery Fund project. For this feat, the museum and the boat’s conservator won the coveted national Pilgrim Trust Conservation Award for 2002 – the “Oscar” of such recognition.
Since all usable subsystems were stripped from the boat before her intended trip to the breakers in 1913, and no attempt has been made to replace them with reproductions, much is left to the imagination in Holland’s interior. Nonetheless, the torpedo tube and the entire propulsion plant remain in reasonable condition, including the diesel engine, electric motor, and the associated clutch and gear train. Moreover, the hull, propeller, rudders, torpedo-tube bow cap, and other external features appear like new, and one of the original battery cells has been set up as a separate exhibit. In short, there’s simply no better way to appreciate the “look and feel” of our earliest submarines than by crawling around inside Holland I!
Daring raids
HMS X-24 is the third full-size submarine at the museum, although perhaps the phrase “full-size” is misleading. She is one of 25 miniature submarines known as “X-craft” cobbled together during World War II for undersea commando raids on Axis targets. Displacing only 40 tons on a length of 52 feet, the X-craft were powered by the same Gardner diesel engine that drove London’s two-decker buses and carried a crew of four, including a diver. The most spectacular successes achieved by these little boats include the disabling of the German battleship Tirpitz inside her protected anchorage in a Norwegian fiord in 1943 and the destruction of the Japanese cruiser Takao at Singapore in 1945 – both exploits that earned Victoria Crosses for their crews. X-24 herself, during two 1944 raids in Bergen, Norway, sank a valuable motor vessel and the only floating dry dock accessible at that time to German U-boats. However, nine other X-craft were lost in the conflict.
X-24 is on temporary display outside the museum’s main building, and the hull has been separated into two parts so that one can peer into the engine compartment aft and the cramped crew spaces forward. Plans are well along to build a separate building – much like Holland’s – which will allow moving X-24 into protected interior space and showing the craft to better advantage.
The museum houses its main indoor exhibits in a two-story gallery opposite HMS Alliance, with recent submarine operations depicted on the ground floor and historical artifacts displayed on the level above. For submarine history buffs, the upstairs spaces are a treasure trove! Whereas the U.S. Submarine Force largely established their extraordinary reputation during World War II, the RN Submarine Service had already compiled a heroic operational record in World War I, decades earlier. And the evidence is all there: mementos of Martin Nasmith’s exploits in the Sea of Marmara in E-11 in 1915 and Max Horton’s success with E-9 in “owning” the Baltic during those same years; curious design innovations such as the steam-powered “K” class and subsequent boats with 12-inch guns; and the poignant story of the 16-year old “boy telegraphists” taken to sea on submarines as wartime radio operators – nine of whom were lost in “the Great War.” Delving even deeper into submarine history, there is also a full-size replica of David Bushnell’s Revolutionary War Turtle and an intriguing collection of models of the experimental boats of such early submarine pioneers as Fulton, Garrett, Nordenfeldt, and Simon Lake.
The Jolly Roger
The museum’s comprehensive survey of British submarine history continues into World War II, highlighting their intensive submarine campaign in the Mediter-ranean, where David Wanklyn and HMS Upholder sank 119,000 tons of enemy shipping before succumbing themselves during their 25th patrol. There is also an impressive wall-sized collection of “Jolly Roger” victory flags recording numerous enemy ships destroyed in the war. More contemporary exhibits continue downstairs, where ship models, control stations from decommissioned submarines, an informative nuclear-power display, and two working periscopes overlooking Portsmouth Harbor (from HMS Conqueror of Falklands War fame) particularly attract the attention of young visitors.
There are additional materials in several ancillary buildings, one of which has been designated as the “Weapons Gallery.” As something of a jumble of old weapons and equipment, this is clearly a “work in progress,” but there are some interesting things to be found there. Worth noting, for example, are exemplars of current and past British torpedoes, including an original Whitehead, full-size Polaris and Tomahawk missiles, an Italian human torpedo, the last deck gun to be fired from a British submarine – a 4-incher from HMS Andrew – and perhaps the only World War I periscope still preserved in working order – a 1918 Grubb & Company model from L-14. There is also a small building – apparently under renovation – dedicated to submarine escape and rescue exhibits and approach-and-attack in World War I.
According to retired British submariner CDR Jeffrey Tall OBE RN, Director of the RN Submarine Museum, about 650 large submarine boats have served the Royal Navy since Holland I was commissioned in 1901. Of these, 54 (25 percent) were lost in World War I, 74 (35 percent) in World War II, and 26 in peacetime accidents. These sad losses are commemorated at the museum in two moving memorials – a “Remembrance Corner” in the historical gallery, where those who gave their lives in the Service are recalled with a display of their personal decorations; and a pier-side stone tablet engraved with the names of all H.M. submarines lost at sea. At the top of the latter appears the single Latin word Resurgam – “I shall rise again.”
Dr. Whitman is the Senior Editor of UNDERSEA WARFARE Magazine. He wishes to acknowledge with thanks the graciousness of CDR Jeff Tall, Director of the RN Submarine Museum, in hosting his visit during April 2003.
Dr. Whitman is the Senior Editor of UNDERSEA WARFARE Magazine. He wishes to acknowledge with thanks the graciousness of CDR Jeff Tall, Director of the RN Submarine Museum, in hosting his visit during April 2003.
