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Armaments consisted of four 21" torpedo tubes with a cache of eight Whitehead
torpedoes together with a three inch deck gun which could fire a 17.5 lb shell to a range of 12,000 yds.
The boat was was on a work up patrol and left Chatham on the 18th July and
stopped overnight at Sheerness on the Ise of Sheppey to wait for assembly of a north-bound merchant convoy leaving the Thames and gathering off Southend. The boat then set out for Dunoon Scotland and the Clyde
to join the 3rd Submarine Flotilla and was under way on the surface following the northbound
merchant convoy EC4 in a swept corridor around the East Anglia and then towards Scotland.
A Heinkel attacked the convoy and Umpire crash dived to avoid it ( as per standing orders) but on surfacing, one of the diesels developed a fault on the night of the 19th July and had to be shut down. This reduced Umpire's speed and a radio message was sent to the Commodore of the convoy, reporting this. A Motor Launch was sent back as escort but lost Umpire in the gathering darkness.
A second merchant convoy was expected travelling south, also in the swept channel
and both convoys passed starboard to starboard, which was unusual. Umpire
spotted the southbound convoy and altered course to port to avoid a collision,
but was rammed by a Royal Naval armed trawler "Peter Hendriks". Umpire suffered
damage to the starboard side and sank within 30 seconds in about 60 feet of water. The skipper and the OOW Tony Godden were on the bridge with two lookouts when the submarine sank beneath them, leaving all four in the water.
The remainder of the crew and two offices ers were trapped in the hull which was gradually filling with water. Four made an escape from the conning tower without DSEA while the remainder made their escape from the engine room with DSEA.
tHe chief ERA was awarded the British Empire Medal for walking about on the submerged hull to check the crew were escaping safely.
A total of two officers and twenty men were lost, the wreck is classified as a war grave and lies some
20 nautical miles north of Wells-next-the-sea Norfolk.
Lt. Cdr. EP Young
Edward "Teddy" Young, who has died aged 89, was the man who found
the penguin for Penguin Books - literally, at London Zoo. Later, he
immortalised his distinguished war service as a submariner in the bestselling
autobiography, One Of Our Submarines.
After attending Highgate school, north London, Young went into publishing,
working his way up at Bodley Head to designing dust-jackets, for which
he showed a natural aptitude. This was remembered by Allen Lane when,
in 1935, he resigned as managing director to effectively invent the
modern paperback.
Lane chose to call his new enterprise Penguin Books, and sent the
22-year-old Young to London Zoo to make sketches of the eponymous bird,
which soon became world-famous as a symbol both of the company and of
affordable, high-quality books. Young also designed Penguin's instantly
recognisable paper covers, with their colour-coded bands: orange-white-orange
for novels, green for crime, and pale blue for the Pelican series of
accessible books on academic subjects.
After four years at Penguin, Young moved to the Reprint Society. But
with the threat of war, he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve,
where his experience as a yachtsman earned him an instant commission
as a sub-lieutenant.
He then volunteered for submarine service while at King Alfred in Hove and, by July 1941, was on
HMS Umpire as third hand, one of the simple and sturdy U-class boats designed for
work in shallow, coastal waters. However, after avoiding a south bound convoy on the surface at night off the Wash, Umpire was rammed and sunk by a trawler escorting the coastal
convoy; of the 37 crew, 22 were lost. Shortly after the boat hit the bottom at
60ft, Young and three others escaped through the conning tower without
breathing apparatus , others ascaped from the engine room.
Shortly after Young transferred to HMS Sealion and spent a short period in the bitterly cold,
Soviet northern waters, as torpedo officer of the larger boat Sealion
(which gave its name to that class of submarines), Young was later on promoted
to first lieutenant on HMS Saracen. He earned a mention in the dispatches
of his skipper, Lieutenant-Commander Michael Lumby, when Saracen attacked
a U-boat east of Iceland, en route to the open waters of the north Atlantic.
Only one German survived.
Saracen was then reassigned to the warmer waters around Malta, where
the 10th submarine flotilla played a gallant role in defending the beleaguered
island, and in the campaign against German and Italian convoys to north
Africa. Young was awarded the first of two DSCs for his part in sinking
an Italian submarine off Sicily in late 1942.
The following June, he became the first RNVR officer to command a
submarine, taking charge of the latest Sealion class boat, HMS Storm.
However, by the time the boat was ready for patrols, the battle of the
Atlantic had been won, the Mediterranean was secure and the Admiralty
was sending naval reinforcements to the far east.
From her new base in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the Storm took part in
surface actions against enemy shipping in East Indies waters, and Young
earned his second DSC. A trap was set for the submarine after an agent
it had landed on Sumatra was captured by the Japanese and forced to
lure the boat inshore. A brisk exchange of cannon and machinegun fire
ensued, but Young did not leave the scene until the rubber dinghy carrying
the two would-be rescuers returned to the Storm. One sailor was wounded.
With the Indian Ocean quiet, British submarines began to work in the
American south-west Pacific command, from the western Australian base
of Fremantle. Young won his DSO for a series of eventful patrols, before
bringing his boat home in spring 1945. Promoted acting commander, he
finished the war in a staff posting, and left the navy at the end of
the year.
He returned briefly to the Reprint Society, but soon transferred to
Pan Books, one of Penguin's earliest paperback rivals. Rupert Hart-Davis
Ltd, where he was appointed production director, published his gripping
memoir in 1952, and, two years later, Penguin honoured him by making
the book its 1000th paperback. It is still in print.
In the early 1970s, Young spent three years as managing director of
the Rainbird publishing group. He wrote several other non-fiction books
in his sparetime. He is survived by the two daughters of his first marriage,
to Diana Graves.
Edward Preston Young, publisher, writer and submariner, born November
17 1913; died January 28 2003
The bow is damaged and there appears to be a live re-load torpedo
visible inside the hull. The four inch deck gun lies on the seabed
a few metres away from the hull and a few metres aft of the gun mounting
position on the upper deck.
Fourteen of the crew managed to escape when the Umpire was rammed,
with most of the survivors escaping through the engine room escape
hatch, using submarine DSEA apparatus. However this area of the wreck
is heavily damaged in the vicinity of the engine room and the aft
section of the wreck is separated from the keel. Looking forward the
two diesel engines are clearly visible, but there are no signs of
electric motors. It appears that the wreck has been damaged by anchors,
trawlers and divers during the years that have elapsed since it sank.
HMS P32 HMS
P33 (lost 18 Aug, 1941) HMS
P36 (lost 1 Apr, 1942) HMS
P38 (lost 23 Mar, 1942) HMS
P39 (lost 26 Mar, 1942) HMS
P48 (lost 25 Dec, 1942) HMS
Ultimatum HMS
Ultor HMS
Umbra HMS
Umpire (lost 19 Jul, 1941) HMS
Una HMS
Unbeaten (lost 11 Nov, 1942) HMS
Unbending HMS
Unbroken (Became the Soviet submarine
V-2) HMS
Undaunted (lost 13 May, 1941) HMS
Undine (lost 7 Jan, 1940) HMS
Union (lost 15 Jul, 1941) HMS
Unique (lost 7 Oct, 1942) HMS
Unison (Became the Soviet submarine V-3) HMS
United HMS
Unity (lost 29 Apr, 1940) HMS
Universal HMS
Unrivalled HMS
Unruffled HMS
Unruly HMS
Unseen HMS
Unshaken HMS
Unsparing HMS
Unswerving HMS
Untamed (Vitality) (lost 30 May, 1943) HMS
Untiring HMS
Upholder (lost 14 Apr, 1942) HMS
Upright HMS
Uproar HMS
Upstart HMS
Urchin (Became the Polish submarine Sokol) HMS
Urge (lost 1 May, 1942) HMS
Ursula (Became the Soviet submarine V-4) HMS
Usk (lost 3 May, 1941) HMS
Usuper (lost 11 Oct, 1943) HMS
Uther HMS
Utmost (lost 24 Nov, 1942)
Admiralty Chart 108, Approaches to the Wash.
Admiralty Chart 106, Cromer to Smiths Knoll.
Admiralty Chart 105, Cromer Knoll and the Outer Banks.
Ordnance Survey Landranger map 132, North-west Norfolk, King's Lynn
and Fakenham.
Ordnance Survey Landranger map 133, North East Norfolk, Cromer and
Wroxham.
Shipwreck Index of the British Isles Vol 3, by Richard & Bridget
Larn.
The U class was developed as small and manoeuvrable coastal submarines for use
in the waters around the UK with a displacement of some 730 tons and were designed
to replace the First War H class boats. The U class was a "single hull" design with water ballast and fuel tanks located within the pressure hull and with no external saddle tanks. HMS Umpire was laid down in 1939, initially
as the P31, and was built at HM Dockyard Chatham, Kent. The boat was finally
launched on the 30th December 1940 and commissioned on the 10th July 1941.
Location of HMS Umpire
A
Survivor's Tale
A Diver's Report - HMS Umpire
The wreck lies on its starboard side only about 18 metres below the surface and
is partly broken up. On exposed ribs some spectacular anemones can be
seen and due to the shallow depth and the clean sandy seabed, there
is good visibility and plenty of sunlight . The conning tower has become
detached from the hull with the main gun mount just forward of it. Further
forward the torpedo space shows signs of damage but the torpodo loading
hatch is visible.
Submarines of the U Class
Further
Information & Charts