HMS/M Seal

HMS/M Seal, a minelaying submarine of the Porpoise class.

After Seal (Lt. Cdr. Rupert Philip Lonsdale) had completed a lay of mines at 0945 on 4 May 1940 in a very dangerous position inside the Kattegat, she started to retire westwards, with German E-boats threatening from the North East, between two unsuspected lines of German mines laid, respectively, at a depth of 15 and 30 meters.

The Kattegat, with Skagen at the tip of Denmark

By 1000, the E-boats had not been shaken off so Seal went to 70 feet and stopped all auxiliary machinery. Half an hour later, nine miles east of Skagen lighthouse, there was a heavy explosion forcing Seal to bottom in 130-feet.

The mining compartment, part of the crew space, the auxiliary machinery space and the motor room were flooded and the submarine lay on the bottom at an angle of 18 degrees bows up. Seal had picked up and towed one of the German mines earlier in the day and this had finally detonated. At 2300 Lonsdale endeavoured to pump the boat off the bottom to escape under cover of darkness; but it was not until 0100 on the next morning that she broke surface when she proved completely uncontrollable. It was decided to try to make for Swedish territorial waters, stern-first if necessary, which was the only way in which the submarine manageable.

But daylight came early and at 0250 Seal was sighted by German aircraft and attacked. Fire was returned until Lewis gun jammed and no further retaliation was possible. A German seaplane, operating from Aalborg, Denmark, then 'landed' near Seal, held up the crew with its guns and took the captain prisoner, returning firstly to Aalborg and thence to Kiel. The officers remaining onboard were loathe to sink the boat with crew, including two badly wounded men, still on board and, by the time a German trawler UJ-128 arrived, Seal appeared to be sinking gradually by the stern of her own accord. In any case, all cypher equipment and the W/T had been destroyed, so the Germans would, at best, have a crippled minelaying submarine as their prize.

Seal was towed to Frederikshavn, Denmark, still sinking gradually -- but not fast enough. The towing ship, a trawler renamed and armed as a submarine-hunter, the UJ-128, had all of Seal's crew onboard as prisoners. She was taken into the Danish harbour with just a bump on the seabed at the harbour entrance, and then put alongside a wall. By this time, the Seal was listing at about 50 degrees.

Seal under tow to Frederikshavn

German picture of Seal, possibly at Frederikshavn, Denmark. The picture was found in Germany by George Schlaud in a photo album and sent to me by his nephew, Paul Marak. The photo was annotated "Norway" on the reverse, but records mention only Fredrikshavn, Denmark.

Fortunately the damage caused by the mine and the later bullets, and the destruction of secret apparatus by the crew, prevented the German Navy from reconditioning the boat.

After three days in Frederikshavn, where holes in the Seal were plugged and the high-pressure air system patched up enough to be able to put the boat back on a roughly even keel, the tow continued down through the Kattegat and in between the Danish islands to Kiel, Germany.

The Seal arrived in Kiel on 11 May 1940, and was laid up at the Germania Yard. She was commissioned as a German boat (UB), but never sailed operationally. The single greatest lesson that the Germans learned from her, though, was from the detonators of the British torpedoes, at that time far more successful and reliable than the German ones.

The whole story of Seal, her captain and ship's company, and including a full account of their time as Prisoners of War, is told in a superb account entitled 'Will We Not Fear', written by C.E.T. Warren and James Benson and published in 1961 by George G. Harrap & Co Ltd.

Some of Seal's ships company as Prisoners of War in Poland, left, and Seal as the German UB

After being completely exonerated at a post-war Court Martial, Lt. Cdr. Lonsdale became a priest in the Church of England and later became the chaplain of a large area in Kenya.  He returned to England as rector of Bentworth-cum-Shalden in the Winchester diocese, but went back to Kenya for a further four years in 1961, becoming a canon of Maseno in 1964. From 1965 until his retirement in 1970 he was vicar of Thomham with Titchwell in Norfolk; he then spent three years as chaplain of Puerto de la Cruz in Tenerife. Lonsdale died on April 25 1999 aged 93. At the time of his return to UK in 1958, the Navy were commissioning a new 'Porpoise' class of submarine. There had been six boats in the earlier class but, even though there were to be eight in the new class, the name Seal was not used.

More information at another site.

See also Miscellaneous Classes