6 minute read
A CLASS ACT
With much talk these days about what is happening under water, it is a good time to remember Herbert aylor, an unsung hero ho had an in uential career based on under ater ar
As the diplomatic row between France and the US/UK alliance over the provision of submarines simmers on, our timing is perfect, for our topic is how some of the most popular yachting destinations also have a close connection to that arm of the Navy where ships become boats – the Submarine Service.
Our nuclear deterrent, the mighty missile carrying submarines have long been based in Scotland at Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, at Faslane on the Gare Loch, with the rest of the underwater fl eet based at Devonport. However, until the 1990s home to the ‘Silent Service’ had been HMS Dolphin at Gosport, just across the harbour from the main Naval Dockyards.
Many of the wags from days past suggested that the location was far from an accident, as in the early days the ‘big ship’ Navy wanted little to do with the development of underwater fi ghting ships that were so ‘unsporting’.
Shaping a weapon Although Great Britain cannot claim the ownership of the fi rst submarines, it was very much an English development that turned the idea of an underwater fi ghting ship into a potent weapon. In 1871 the Royal Navy had bought the manufacturing rights to the rapidly evolving Whitehead torpedo, a weapon that without which one English Admiral declared “the submarine would remain an interesting toy and little more”.
At the start of the First World War submarines, armed with torpedoes, were at fi rst considered a coastal defence asset, but as the Germans turned them into a force that was so potent that the UK could have been cut-off from the rest of the world, the need for countermeasures against an enemy that cannot be seen were needed.
As so often happens, in an hour of need a brilliant mind will arise with an innovative solution. Herbert Taylor was yet another of our amazing, albeit unsung, innovating heroes, indeed one who many feel should be standing alongside the likes of Barnes Wallis.
Once the real menace of the threat posed by the German U-Boats had been
Top: Herbert Taylor. Image: RN Museum In both WWI and WWII, the U-Boat campaign threatened to cut off the UK’s vital supply routes. Depth charges, that created a controlled explosion deep under water, were one of the few weapons that were readily available to lead the fi ght back against the submarines. Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock A tiny submarine that packed a lethal punch, the boats that Herbert Taylor helped develop were used to attack one of the biggest and most dangerous ships found in Northern waters - the dreaded Tirpitz. Image: Submarine Museum, Gosport
The placid and peaceful waters of the Hamble River would see many strange craft, but none as strange as the midget submarines that Herbert Taylor worked on in a shed at what is now Universal Shipyards fully understood, the search was on for a weapon that could attack and destroy a submarine even when it was submerged. In this respect the physics of creating explosions underwater could help, as the force of the blast would be transmitted by the water to cause damage, even without the need for a direct hit.
There was, though, far more to the problem than just dropping a bomb off the back of the boat, as there needed to be some degree of control over how deep the charge should go before it was detonated. It would be Taylor and his colleague Alban Gwynne who developed what they called the hydrostatic pistol, a device that allowed the calibration, in 50ft increments, of the depth that a charge would drop through the water before the pressure detonated it.
Leading the eld Taylor was so far advanced compared to other work in this fi eld that he was asked to join the Admiralty, where he was able to focus his efforts on perfecting the new weapon. The larger of the two operational versions included some 300lb of high explosive in a barrel shaped casing, which could be dropped from the stern of a warship.
Taylor’s depth charges soon proved to be highly effective against submerged submarines and, by 1916, the fi rst German U-Boats were being sunk by the new development.
As the battle against the U-Boats raged, there would be an unpleasant outcome for Herbet Taylor and Alban Gywnne, as when America entered the war one of their early requests was for the details of the increasingly effective depth charges.
There was a problem, as Taylor had patented his development, but with the war in the Atlantic threatening the supply route to the UK, the British Government passed on Taylor’s design. This in turn was patented in the US by a pair of Naval Offi cers, which many saw as a blatant ploy to avoid paying any royalties.
By the time the Armistice was signed in 1918, Taylor’s depth charges had either directly sunk or been involved in the sinking of nearly 200 submarines, but the battle for recognition and royalties would drag on into the 1930s and though Taylor would eventually win his case in Court, he never received the fi nancial rewards due to him.
Back to work When war broke out in 1939 Taylor, who by now was in his late 60s, had retired, but the need for new solutions saw him back at work, based on a site on the Hamble River, close to where the Universal shipyard and marina is now located.
The concept of a small, diffi cult to detect submarine had been explored back in the 1920s, only for the work to have been shelved. Now, as the world again descended into war, development of both ‘Chariots’ (where two frogmen would sit astride a torpedo) and mini or ‘midget’ submarines would accelerate.
It is easy to forget that the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour was led by a number of midget submarines, with one believed to have made it right into the supposedly secure anchorage.
From what was little more than a shed at the bottom of the Salterns, Taylor would lay the foundations for a new breed of midget submarine that in time would, as the X Class, go on to successfully attack the German battleship Tirpitz.
Taylor’s plans for a small submarine powered by the same engine as found in a London bus would be tested on the Hamble, which at the confl uence of Badnam Creek had some hollows that were plenty deep enough for these early trials.
Herbert Taylor may have been an unsung hero, one that was deprived of the rightful rewards from his work, but his contribution to the UK’s war efforts, across both World Wars was fi nally recognised with the award of an MBE in 1945. Despite this, he remained a quiet and private man, an unsung hero who lived into his mid-80s before dying in Emsworth in 1959. There is no memorial to him and few of the thousands of yachts that grace the Hamble today have any idea of the darker secrets that the river once held!
