Front Cover: Matthew Short’s Shortwave heads south during the 2009 Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Photo by Howard Wright/IMAGE Professional Photography.
Carlingford is a northwestern suburb of Sydney. The suburb was named after Cairlinnfjord, the original name of a Viking settlement in Ireland. As motorists travel along Pennant Hills Road towards Parramatta and pass through Carlingford, they cross a bridge over the Clyde-Carlingford railway line. Almost immediately on the left or southern side of the road, there is an unusual monument that displays a large K 13. This insignia refers to a WWI submarine; the HMS K 13 that was built in Glasgow by Fairfield Shipbuilders and launched 11 November 1916.
She was of a new and revolutionary design. The Admiralty commissioned seventeen of these K Class vessels. They were 103m in length with a beam of over 8m and a draught of 6.4m.
The K 13 displaced 2,600 tonnes underwater and was driven on the surface by two oil-fired boilers that were connected to two steam turbines. Electric motors, run off batteries, were the power source underwater. The vessel had a conning tower and retractable funnels. It had a top speed of 24 knots on the surface and 8 knots submerged. Normally, K 13 had a crew of 59. She was armed with torpedos and guns. She had a maximum range of 12,500 nautical miles on the surface and 40 nautical miles underwater.
But why is there a monument at Carlingford, a suburb of Sydney?
The K 13 was struck by tragedy during her sea trials and many on board were drowned. One person who survived was Charles Freestone, the K 13’s leading telegraphist. At the end of WWI, he was serving in the Australian Navy and decided to remain here. He was a very successful Parramatta businessman and in 1956, he set aside part of his property at Carlingford for a K 13 memorial park. Charles Freestone died in 1958 but his widow persisted with the project. The memorial was finally unveiled by Commander Phillip R. Wood, DSC, RN, Commander Submarines, Fourth Submarine Division, Sydney, on 10 September 1961 in the presence of the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom and Mrs M.F. Freestone.
The inscription commemorates all submariners who were killed serving their country. However it is called K 13 for those who lost their lives during the initial sea trials of that vessel in 1917.
On the morning of 29 January 1917, the K 13 started her sea trials on Gareloch (also spelt Gare Loch). However, the day before the actual sea trials, the submarine was submerged for an hour within the shipyard’s basin and everything was reported as being ship-shape. Not only were a crew of 53 on board but also 14 directors and employees of the builders, 5 representatives of the sub-contractors, 5 Admiralty officials and a Clyde pilot. In addition, two officers, Captain Goodhart, DSO and the Chief Engineer, both from the twin ship K 14 that was still under construction in the same yard, were also on board.
At 0800 hrs, the order to cast off was given by the K 13’s skipper, Lt Commander Godfrey Herbert. Slowly, tugs towed the giant submarine out of basin at Fairfield’s yard and she moved off gently down the Clyde and into Gareloch. Once in the test area, K 13 completed her surface trials where she recorded a speed of 23kn. That made her the fastest submarine in the world.
Everyone on board was thrilled and lunch was served in a festive mood. It was 1515hrs before the submarine was brought to the dive area.
Before the dive, a careful examination was made of the instrumentation. Everything appeared to be functioning correctly. It was subsequently noted that one of the indicators was flickering but this was thought to be caused by faulty wiring.
But this vital indicator showed that some boiler room ventilators were not fully shut off.
K13 began her dive smoothly, but refused to level out at 6m and continued her downward plunge. It was reported that the boiler room was flooded, so to save the ship, the watertight door to the stern section was closed off. This meant certain death to those trapped.
The descent could not be stopped and K 13 settled in 16m of water. A fire broke out in the main switchboard consuming valuable oxygen but this was quickly extinguished.
Thirty-one men were already dead and survival of the remainder was problematical.
Surface observers became concerned when K 13 failed to re-surface and oil slicks appeared. It was almost 2200 hours before the first rescue vessel, Gossamer, arrived. An attempt to send a diver down was frustrated because there was no diving suit on board the ship. It was dawn before divers descended.
When they finally reached K 13, her stern was deeply buried in the mud. They knocked on the hull and were amazed to get a response.
Meanwhile, inside K 13, the two submariner skippers, Lt Com. Godfrey Herbert of K 13 and Captain Goodhart of K 14 prepared an escape plan, hoping one of them would reach the surface.
Their plan was to be propelled through the conning tower to the surface, using high-pressure air bottles. Goodhart made the first attempt but on being violently projected upwards, hit his head and was immediately killed. Herbert then tried and successfully reached the surface where he was picked up by the salvage crew.
Divers were once again sent down and communicated with the remaining survivors using Morse code. They ingeniously attached a flexible hose through which air, some food and drinks were passed. Playing cards were sent down “to beguile the tedium of waiting”. Those still alive could survive if a method of escape were devised.
The salvage crew fed strong wire hawsers around the bow of the submarine, oil was blown from her fuel tanks and the bow winched up until it was above the surface. A hole was cut through the hull and through this, the men escaped. They had been entombed 57 hours by the time the last man was rescued, around midnight on 31 January.
Forty-eight men had been saved.
Around 1800hrs the following day, the submarine broke loose and slid back to the bottom of the loch. It was finally salvaged on 15 March, taken back to the shipyard, repaired and recommissioned as HMS K 22.
There is no record of a K Class submarine ever sinking or damaging any enemy shipping. However, there are several accounts of these vessels being lost or damaged during ‘exercises’. During the K Class’s operational life, more than 300 men lost their lives through accidents.
As a result of my writing about this episode in a local newspaper, a letter was received from Peter Moore, formerly a lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy. Here is what he wrote: “When I was serving on exchange in the Royal Navy, I was posted to the submarine HMS Osiris. In October 1976, the Osiris was scheduled to conduct a trial dive in the Gare Loch to test and trial a prototype rescue submersible. The Osiris was intended to lie at the bottom of the loch while the rescue submersible attached itself to the escape hatch.
“Very early on a wintry morning, the Osiris dived and sat in the mud on the bottom at a keel depth of 106 metres. The dive went without incident and we gently settled with a slight list to port. This list apparently caused all sorts of problems for the rescue submersible and we were asked to sit patiently on the bottom while the submersible tired various manoeuvres to attach itself to our escape hatch.
“During that time, with all our machinery shut down, it got colder and colder inside the submarine and it became uncomfortable to touch any metal surface with the bare hand. As it became colder, all the water vapour in the air started to condense and very soon water was dripping off the machinery bulkheads and the cabling.
“Quite unexpectedly, one of our batteries shorted out, the condensed water apparently had worked its way into the cabling connecting the propulsion batteries to our very essential propulsion motors. Now, reduced to one battery, we all suddenly became quite concerned and the order was passed to start up the machinery even though it would cause a drain on our remaining battery. Meanwhile, the ‘Greenies’ (electricians) opened up the junction boxes and managed to clean out the moisture causing the short circuit. “After 10 hours of sitting on the bottom, still very concerned but bored stiff, we were finally cleared to surface the submarine. We blew our ballast tanks but the Osiris was stuck fast in the mud.
“The concern suddenly grew as we remembered about the crew of the K 13. With our ballast tanks full of air, we then started to pump water out of our compensation tanks and with a great sigh of relief, we noticed the depth gauges started to move upwards. Osiris broke free from the mud and we charged up to the surface of the cold, grey Gare Loch.
“Why was the fate of the K 13 so concerning to the crew of HMS Osiris? Because the hull number of the submarine was S 13.”
[Peter Moore, Letters to the Northern District Times, 11 November 2009.]
The K-13 memorial at Carlingford has several plaques but essentially it is for those submariners of the Royal Australian Navy who lost their lives while serving in submarines. There is also a plaque giving RN submarine losses, this information coming from the submarine memorial on the Thames Embankment.
* Gregory Blaxell is an historian and author. A new edition of his book The River: Sydney Cove to Parramatta is now available. Trade orders can be made through the publishers, Halstead Press.
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He was a very successful Parramatta businessman and in 1956, he set aside part of his property at Carlingford for a K 13 memorial park. Charles Freestone died in 1958 but his widow persisted with the project. The memorial was finally unveiled by Commander Phillip R. Wood, DSC, RN, Commander Submarines, Fourth Submarine Division, Sydney, on 10 September 1961 in the presence of the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom and Mrs M.F. Freestone.
Not only were a crew of 53 on board but also 14 directors and employees of the builders, 5 representatives of the sub-contractors, 5 Admiralty officials and a Clyde pilot. In addition, two officers, Captain Goodhart, DSO and the Chief Engineer, both from the twin ship K 14 that was still under construction in the same yard, were also on board. 
“When I was serving on exchange in the Royal Navy, I was posted to the submarine HMS Osiris. In October 1976, the Osiris was scheduled to conduct a trial dive in the Gare Loch to test and trial a prototype rescue submersible. The Osiris was intended to lie at the bottom of the loch while the rescue submersible attached itself to the escape hatch.
“After 10 hours of sitting on the bottom, still very concerned but bored stiff, we were finally cleared to surface the submarine. We blew our ballast tanks but the Osiris was stuck fast in the mud.
