Courage of the highest order was demanded of the officers
and men of the navies that first employed submarines in the early twentieth
centuries. Designs were still experimental and operating experience limited, so
that every dive was an adventure. Accidents were frequent – and usually fatal
when they did occur – and progress was achieved by learning very hard lessons.
The French navy was one of the first to commit to
large-scale submarine construction. It looked to the new weapon, as it had
looked to torpedo boats two decades before, as a cheap method of compensating
for relative weakness in battleship numbers by comparison with potential
rivals. At this stage submarines were primarily seen as suited to coastal and port-defence
and the second –and so-far largest – design class, the four Farfadet units, launched between 1901
and 1903 were intended for this purpose.
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| The Farfadet in service |
135-ft. long and of 185/ 202 tons (surface/submerged), the Farfadets craft were propelled by a
single electric motor driving a variable-pitch propeller. The latter was an
innovative item that dispensed with the need to provide reversing capability
for the motor. Range, determined by the
batteries that had to be charged at the operating base, was limited to 115
miles surfaced and 28 submerged, and the maximum speeds attainable were 6.1
knots on the surface and 4.3 knots when submerged. Small as they were, these
units packed a potentially powerful punch – four 18-inch torpedoes carried on
external drop collars. The potency was proved when one unit of the class, the Korrigan, succeeded in hitting the
monitor Tempete, serving as a harbour guard, with a practice torpedo
while remaining unobserved. This was possibly the first time a target had been hit by a
torpedo launched by a submarine. This considerable feat demanded the Korrigan and her sixteen-man crew remaining
submerged for some twelve hours, somewhat of a record.
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| A contemporary artist's impression of salvage operations Shallowness of water is exaggerated |
Both Korrigan and Farfadet were towed from La Rochelle, on
the French Atlantic coast to the naval base at Bizerte, in Tunisia, in 1904 to provide
port-defence. It was here that disaster was to overcome the Farfadet on July 6th of the
following year when the vessel was undertaking diving exercises some 500 yards
from the arsenal. Commander Cyprien Ratier ordered water to be admitted to the
ballast tanks and the craft began to settle very quickly – too quickly, for the
hatch was not closed properly. (It will be seen from the photographs that the hatches
were a point of vulnerability as they were very close to the waterline when
surfaced and there was no tower as such). Ratier, his mate and the
quartermaster struggled unsuccessfully to close the hatch. Large volumes of
water where now cascading into the boat’s interior and Ratier and his two
assistants were blasted out through the hatch by the escaping air. The Farfadet sank, head-foremost, and buried
her bows in the mud. Ten men had gone down with her.
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| Immense public interest in the salvage |
The stricken craft was lying in approximately thirty feet of
water and some salvage equipment was immediately available at the base. There
were obviously still men alive inside, for they were hammering on the hull. By
the following morning divers had managed to get four steel hawsers passed
around the hull and a floating crane managed to lift it in the early afternoon so
as to lash it to a pontoon. Sufficient
of the hull had been exposed for air-valves to be accessed and air passed in to
the survivors. It was now attempted to move the craft into shallow water, so as
to ground her. The process was a slow one and in the early hours of the following
morning the hawsers parted and the Farfadet
dropped again. Further efforts failed to lift her before the victims trapped
inside died. No further sounds were heard after July 8th, two days
after the disaster. (One notices dreadful similarities to the HMS Thetis disaster in Liverpool Bay in
1939, when the stern of the sunken submarine had been raised above the surface).
Salvage efforts continued, a floating dock being used to
lift the Farfadet – once again, the
role of divers would have been crucial in passing hawsers under, and around, the
hull. On July 9th, the Minister of Marine, Gaston Thomson, arrived from Paris to
observe operations. On July 15th, the floating dock and the submarine suspended
underneath were towed into a dry dock. The floating dock lowered the Farfadet, was then removed, and the dry
dock was pumped out to expose the vessel.
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| The Farfadet - recovered and lying on her side in the dry dock. |
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| Repatriation of the bodies |
The distressing duty of retrieving the bodies was allocated
to the crew of the sister submarine Korrigan.
Four bodies were discovered in the bow compartment, and two in the centre, all probably
killed during the initial inrush of water. Eight men had however managed to seal
themselves in the compartment aft. These men – who had been beating for hours on
the hull plating – had died dreadfully as seawater had reached the sulphuric
acid of the batteries, thereby releasing poisonous chlorine gas. It appeared
that the last of the crew had died after being trapped for 32 hours.
The long-drawn out agony of the Farfadet had kept France in horror-stricken fascination, the more
so since submarines were a new concept, poorly understood by the general
public. There was a massive outpouring of national grief and an imposing
funeral service was held in Bizerte and the coffins returned to France thereafter
for final burial. The salvaged submarine was towed across the Mediterranean to the
naval base at Toulon, was reconditioned, and taken back into service. Cyprien
Ratier continued as her commander for another two years.
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| The Lutin - Farfadet's sister and doomed to follow her in a year |
The Farfadet was
not the only one of her class to meet disaster. Her sister, the Lutin, was to sink, also near Bizerte, in
October 1906. On this occasion structural failure of the hull occurred under
external pressure. An expensive lesson was learned about design and an entire
crew was lost. She too was salvaged. Already outmoded by the time of these
disasters, and having served their purpose in introducing naval personnel to the
science of submarine operation, all members of the Farfadet class were taken from service in the following years, to
be replaced by more sophisticated and more reliable designs.
The Farfadet was
not to be the last peacetime submarine disaster. They have continued up to our
own time.
Britannia's Shark
The third of the Dawlish Chronicles series centres on the development - and role - of a prototype submarine. Based on actual events and personalities, Britannia's Shark paints a vivid picture of the skills and courage - bordering on madness - which was needed to operate such craft. Click on the image below to learn more and o read the opening chapters.
Download a free copy of Britannia’s Eventide
To thank subscribers to the Dawlish Chronicles mailing list, a free, downloadable, copy of a new short story, Britannia's Eventide has been sent to them as an e-mail attachment.
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