HMS Affray and the ghost who showed the way
The British submarine HMS Affray disappeared in the English Channel on 16 April 1951 with 75 men; during the two-month search the wife of a submarine captain said a ghost in a dripping uniform told her where it lay.
1951 CE · 49.93, -2.55 · status: account
The account
She recognised him as an officer who had died in the Second World War, not one of Affray's crew. Rumours also spoke of mutiny and of seizure by the Russians. Among 161 wrecks in the Channel, HMS Loch Fyne made sonar contact on 14 June on the edge of Hurd Deep, and an underwater camera showed the letters 'YARFFA', the name backwards. The snort mast was found broken off, the likeliest cause of flooding; it was the last Royal Navy submarine lost at sea.
The sceptical view
The vision is a family account recorded after the event; the wreck's position was found by ordinary search.
Connections in the atlas
- The lost submarine Minerve
- The Hunley and the 'blue light'
- Eurydice and the 'underwater object'
- USS Thresher lost with all hands