‍The glowing hands of luminous wristwatches were the only tiny spots of light in a submarine’s pitch-black interior where what was left of the crew of Russian sailors awaited death in their metal and iron tomb deep down on the seabed.

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‍WE MAY never know the true story of the fate of the Kursk nuclear submarine, or what happened in the darkness between the men as death approached.

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‍But what we do know from the archives is a chilling story of despair, heartbreak and terror when the 23 surviving sailors who could no longer see each other in the darkness, became the pawns of East and West hatred.

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‍Some apparently tried to write letters home to girlfriends, wives and mothers, covering the notes with anything they could feel near them because they knew the messages would probably rot in seawater. They were writing blind.

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‍Others tried vainly to escape through a hatch. All fought to keep their sanity. God only knows what else happened over those long days and hours.

‍The giant submarine, the size of two jumbo jets, was the pride of the Russian Navy. It was said to be unsinkable. Until the unthinkable happened in the Barents Sea.

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‍On August 12, 2000, an old torpedo exploded inside detonating seven other warheads and tearing a hole in the hull killing 95 men forward of the sixth compartment instantly.

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‍But 23 lived on in the darkness of the sealed off sixth area on the seabed 350ft down. They made headlines worldwide. Surely, they would be rescued? The BBC reported that the British Navy picked up knocking sounds on sonar.

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‍Russian attempts to get to them were farcical. And the Russian Government at first refused help from the West because of the secrets inside. Their navy was even slow to send down mini submarines. It was a page from the old Soviet-era playbook. A cover-up. They even blamed the accident on a collision with a foreign submarine.

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‍The world’s Press watched as the Russians finally made repeated futile attempts to hook onto the Kursk’s escape hatch. They failed. In Russia meanwhile, relatives of the crew, who hadn’t been told of the tragedy until days later, held a vigil in the boat’s homeport.

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‍Putin promised the families of the doomed sailors would be looked after and he was good to his word. The crew was based in the naval town of Vidyayevo near Murmansk, where they lived.

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‍The family of every dead man was given a new flat and 720,000 roubles (£18,000) to provide for their futures. All gas and electricity paid for the rest of their lives.

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‍A year after the tragedy, The Guardian Moscow correspondent Amelia Gentleman, wrote a heart-rending piece about life there.

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‍She wrote: “On an ugly stretch of boulevard at the edge of a grey and unremarkable provincial Russian town, a long line of saplings has been planted, two by two. There are 118 birch trees here — one for each submariner who died last summer on board the Kursk.”

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‍This, she said, was where widows of the crew now walked to try and find peace. People spoke of their memories from that fatal day.

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‍“We sensed something was wrong, because the life-saving command was called out early on Sunday morning,” one widow said. “But at first no one was meant to know what they were looking for.”

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‍One of the Kursk rescue team returned, visibly exhausted, later that morning and went to buy some bread from the shop.

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‍‘I’m so tired, I’m about to collapse,’ he told her and other women in the queue. “‘We’ve been up all night looking for The Kursk, it’s at the bottom of the sea.” One of the women fainted, with her grandson in her arms.

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‍After five days of bad Press, Putin finally authorised the Russian Navy to accept British and Norwegian assistance.

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‍Two days later their divers finally opened a hatch in the boat’s ninth compartment. Bodies were found. Over a year later, on October 8, 2001, the remains of the Kursk submarine were lifted from the seabed, attached to a giant barge and towed to Murmansk.

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‍CHURCHILL’S DAILY ROUTINE

‍WAS A RECIPE FOR A LONG LIFE

‍Richard Langworth, a biographer of Churchill, revealed the 90-year-old former wartime PM’s typical day.

‍7:30 — Wake up, remain in bed, eat breakfast, read newspapers, work, glass of whiskey and soda.

‍11:00 — Out of bed, stroll around garden supervising estate, whiskey and soda.

‍13:00 — Multi-course lunch, imperial pint of Champagne.

‍15:30 — Work from study, glass of cognac.

‍17:00 — Hour and a half nap/siesta, a habit acquired during his time in Cuba.

‍18:30 — Wake up, bath, dress for dinner.

‍20:00 — Lengthy dinner with guests, imperial pint of Champagne.

‍00:00 — Work in study, more cognac.

‍01:00–03:00 — Bedtime.

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‍SKATERS FOUGHT FOR THEIR LIVES AS

‍PARK ICE SHATTERS UNDER THEIR FEET

‍IT WAS the worst ice-skating tragedy in British history.

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‍On January 16, 1867, on the western side of London’s Regent’s Park Lake, nearly 200 men, women and children were skating on six acres of frozen water.

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‍In among them were burning braziers where hot chestnuts were selling like well, hot chestnuts did in the winter … and a hockey match was in full throttle with men banging their sticks on the ice and being pushed over.

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‍Suddenly and without warning, the ice shattered into thousands of pieces, and everyone went down into the water, up to nine feet deep.

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‍Traders on the banks of the lake selling oranges and muffins ran to fetch police and firemen as screams pierced the afternoon air.

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‍The rescue that followed took hours as boats and ladders splashed about in the water in desperate attempts to save lives. Forty-one people drowned and nearly 100 suffered injuries and frostbite.

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‍The Press were soon the scene, collecting eyewitness reports and survivors’ stories.

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‍“Without a second’s warning the ice seemed to glide from under us, leaving us in water quite five feet deep,” said Mr Dunton, from Oxford, who later told the Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette of his frightening experience.

‍“I was on the lake with my two children, and I fought to keep them afloat,” he added. “It was 4.15pm in the afternoon and such a sight I hope never to see again. Quite 150 persons were struggling for life. Heads and arms were to be seen all around amongst the broken masses of ice.

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‍“Two yards from me a little boy was drowning and I couldn’t help. I stood in this position for nearly half an hour, sinking down in the soft mud deeper every minute, until the water reached my chin.

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‍“I held my children as high as possible above water until I felt my legs being cramped with the cold. I said to the eldest, ‘Is there any help coming, Fred? Wave my walking-stick, for I am sinking down in the mud.’

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‍“Presently the boy said, ‘Father, a man is swimming to us, and we shall be saved.’ On looking round, I saw a brave young fellow plunging through the ice towards me.”

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‍The Victorian newspapers did not spare the gory details of that day.

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‍Looking through the British Press Archives, I found the Oxford Chronicle giving graphic descriptions of the corpses recovered from the lake, their faces being of ‘a purple tint with intense congestion, and there was froth about the teeth, the lips being widely separated.’

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‍The next day fishermen dragged their nets along the bottom of the lake, and divers with the latest equipment scoured for bodies. They later likened the experience to ‘being in a dark room.’

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‍No one could explain the accident. One theory was the park’s Ice Men who broke up the ice near the edges of the water to prevent people from accessing the private little islands were to blame.

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‍The inquest at the Marylebone Workhouse blamed the afternoon sun; men playing hockey on the lake and people jumping on and off the ice.

‍*****

‍THE WAY WE WERE: I came across a popular recipe book the other day, written in 1715 by Thomas Newington. Of course they didn’t have Tesco’s then. Most things were done at home from slaughter to plate.

‍I have kept the spelling as it was written 400 years ago. Not for the squeamish, by the way. Enjoy your bacon!

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‍HOW TO KILL & ROAST A PIGG

‍“Take your Pigg and hold the head down in a Payle of cold Watter untill strangeled, then hang him up buy the heals and fley him.

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‍Then open him, then chine him down the back as you doe a porker, first cuting of his head, then cut him in fower quarters.

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‍Lard two of the quarters with lemon peele and other two with tops of Time, then spit and roast them.

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‍The head requeares more roasting than the braines with a little Sage and grave for sauce.”

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‍TERRY MANNERS

‍4 May, 2026