The Terrible Loss of HMS Seahorse

And the sad tale of the prize that was never claimed

The dangers faced by submariners during the Second World War were so great Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that of all the branches of men in the forces, none showed more devotion and faced grimmer perils than the submariners. Sadly, in the early days of the conflict, all 39 officers and crew of the submarine HMS Seahorse succumbed to those perils in the North Sea. But one of their number left behind a poignant memento that serves to this day as a reminder of how quickly and devastatingly fortunes can change during times of war.

The port of Blyth stands on the south-east coast of Northumberland, on the south side of a river of the same name. It has a long and proud history, much of which has had the river at its heart. For much of the twentieth century, heavy industry kept many local people in employment via shipyards and coal mines, and both relied heavily on the river to function.

In 1914, the world’s first seaplane carrier, Ark Royal, was built and launched in Blyth, being converted from the tramp steamer Ryton. In the 1960s, Blyth was regularly the biggest coal-exporting port in Europe, shipping out over six million tons at its peak in 1961. The shipyards and coal mines are long gone, and ships are no longer berthed three-abreast as they were in those hectic days, but the port still flourishes. In the summer of 2016, Blyth was host to one leg of the Tall Ships Regatta, a hugely successful event which, over four days, saw a quarter of a million people in attendance and a three million pound cash injection into the local economy.

Misery of war

With the misery of war, many aspects of life are changed as adaptations are made to accommodate new situations. As such, Blyth operated as a submarine base during both world wars.

With its active shipyards and coal-loading facilities, Blyth was a potential target. Being an operational submarine base elevated the risk of enemy attack on the port, so measures were taken to ensure it could be adequately defended.

Blyth’s defence structures from the First World War were still in place, set back from the beach just south of the mouth of the river. These were rearmed to be used for a second time as dark war threatened Europe.

Most of those defence structures still stand today and are in good condition. There are observation posts and a searchlight building, and the dominant feature is a pair of solid concrete gun emplacements, each of which housed a six-inch BL MK.7 gun. Those fearsome weapons, 23 feet long and with a range of seven miles, could sweep the entire horizon and were perfectly positioned to fire upon any unauthorised craft trying to enter the port. Such substantial firepower was deemed necessary at the start of hostilities when there were over 100 personnel attached to the battery.

Busy pub

But, even in wartime, people need to relax. Although there were many pubs in and around Blyth in those days, the submariners chose the Astley Arms in the nearby village of Seaton Sluice as their local. This large, double-fronted building stands on the A193 Links Road, just over a mile from the Blyth Battery. It is and has always been, a popular and busy pub.

On Christmas Eve, 1939, some of the crew of the submarine Seahorse were enjoying Christmas drinks at the Astley. One of their number, twenty-three-year-old Leonard ‘Tug’ Wilson, won a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky in the Christmas raffle. As the Seahorse was going out on patrol on Boxing Day, the young prizewinner asked the landlady, Lydia Jackson, if she would keep the whisky safe until the Seahorse returned from patrol early in January. She happily obliged.

On 26 December 1939, Seahorse sailed out of Blyth on what was to be her final mission. Her immediate objective was to patrol the waters of Heligoland Bight, the bay off the mouth of the Elbe, which makes up the southern part of the shipping forecast area German Bight, immortalised by Billy Casper in the film Kes.

Seahorse’s orders were to patrol just off Heligoland and then head towards the mouth of the Elbe on 30 December. After spending several days on patrol there, she would return to port and was expected back at Blyth on 9 January 1940. She never arrived on her due date.

Anxious wait

After an anxious wait, and with no news on the fate of the Seahorse, the inevitable came on 16 January, when German Radio announced its ships had destroyed three British submarines in Helgoland Bight. The broadcast named only two sunken vessels, HMS Starfish and HMS Undine, and it was widely assumed that the third was the Seahorse. Subsequent research into the sinking has shown that this was not the case, and the location of the wreck of the Seahorse is still unknown.

This was a terrible period for Blyth, as those three submarines had sailed from the port and were lost over just a few days. While the crews of Starfish and Undine were rescued by German boats, all hands aboard the Seahorse were lost.

During the inevitable confusion that comes with war, when anxious families fear the worst but, having received no official notification on the fate of a loved one, hope for the best, Alexander Pope’s line that hope springs eternal in the human breast is epitomised. Lydia Jackson never gave up hope of seeing her Seahorse customers again.

The war ended, years turned into decades, and Len Wilson’s unclaimed prize remained at the Astley Arms, untouched and unopened. But it was there, a tiny memorial to those once regulars who had met the grimmest of fates in the icy waters of the North Sea. It also demonstrated that one pub landlady was determined never to give up on her absent customers.

In 1971, Lydia Jackson retired. She donated the bottle of whisky to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, where it still stands on display. The distiller Johnnie Walker donated a replica bottle to the Astley Arms along with a plaque remembering the crew of the Seahorse and telling the sad story of the prize that was never claimed.

In the marketplace in Blyth, the anchor from the submarine Tiptoe sits fixed to a plinth as a memorial to the submariners who were based in the town. After the war, those who had survived would return to Blyth to pay their respects on Remembrance Sunday and to call in at their former local up the road in Seaton Sluice to raise a glass or two. But time marches on relentlessly, and their number dwindled over the years until there were very few if any, of those courageous souls still with us.

But the memory of Blyth’s submariners lives on into the twenty-first century via the submariners’ war memorial, Blyth Battery, and an eighty-two-year-old bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky that stands in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, with a replica in the Astley Arms at Seaton Sluice.