HMS Perseus (N36)

HMS Perseus was a British Parthian-class submarine built in 1929 and lost in 1941 during the Second World War. This class were the first to be fitted with Mark VIII torpedoes.

At the start of the war, she was operating under the command of Commander Peter Bartlett on the China Station as part of the 4th Submarine Flotilla, along with all of the other members of the class. This continued until August 1940 when the class was reassigned to the Mediterranean, where part of the duties were the ferrying of supplies between Alexandria and the besieged island of Malta. She underwent a refit at Malta from October until April 1941.

Attached to the 1st Submarine Flotilla, based in Alexandria and under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Edward Christian Frederick Nicolay DSO RN (see Nicolay (family)), she sank the 3,867-ton Italian tanker Maya 5 nmi south of Tenedos on 5 September 1941, and the following month, on 2 October, the 2,086-ton merchant ship Castellon west of Benghazi. It was for these actions that Commander Nicolay received the Distinguished Service Order.

The submarine sailed from Malta for Alexandria on 26 November 1941 with instructions to patrol waters to the east of Greece during her passage. She apparently torpedoed a ship on 3 December but at 10 pm on 6 December struck an Italian mine off Cephalonia, 7 mi north of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea. One man out of the 61 onboard survived, 31-year old Leading Stoker John Capes, one of two non-crew members hitching a lift to Alexandria. He and three others escaped from the submarine using the Twill Trunk escape hatch in the engine room and wearing Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus. However, only he survived the journey to the surface and the five mile (8 km) swim to the island of Cephalonia, where he was hidden by islanders for 18 months before being smuggled in a caïque to Smyrna in Turkey. He was subsequently awarded a British Empire Medal.

The wreck, at 52 m below the surface, was discovered and surveyed in 1997 by Kostas Thoctarides and his dive team.