HMS Olympus in its grave on the seabed off the coast of Malta
SUBMARINE HEROES WHO STRUGGLED TO SURVIVE THE ANGRY WAVES OF WAR
AS DAWN broke over the sea, Chief Petty Officer Gordon Selby looked around him at his crewmates struggling to stay alive in the water, some wearing lifejackets, some not.
The safety of the shore was six miles away and just 50 yards behind them their submarine was sinking. Lined up on the deck were 84 pairs of their boots that began to bob in the water.
Slowly and with dignity, bow first, the stricken HMS Olympus made its last voyage … to the seabed. It had taken just 15 minutes since the explosion for her to disappear from their lives forever. Twice Selby had crawled back inside as she was sinking, risking his life to find as many vital lifejackets for the crew as he could.
This is the incredible story of the British O-class submarine that became one of the Royal Navy’s biggest single tragedies of World War 11 and the heroic men whose destinies came together that fateful day.
The submarine was an iconic war machine back home. The people of Peterborough had adopted it during Warships Week, when cities, towns and villages in England raised money in a national Press appeal for funding to meet the cost of repairing ships and supplying our navy.
Organisations, women’s institutes, churches, schools and communities had held jumble sales and cake baking days and knitted woollen socks, gloves and balaclavas for crewmen.
Children wrote letters and sent cards to the sailors and officers who would visit the Lincolnshire city to say thank you and there would be a parade. They were our heroes in the National and local Press. Now the pride of Peterborough was sinking in front of Chief Petty Officer Selby’s eyes.
The end came in the early hours of May 8, 1942, when the Olympus left its secret cave pen in Valletta, Malta, carrying 55 crew and 43 war-scarred survivors from two torpedoed British subs, all of them relieved to be going home at last.
Sea hero Selby
Seven miles out the vessel hit a German mine but managed to surface in the darkness, its bowels flooding. Escaping submariners were ordered to line-up on deck, take off their shoes and socks, keep on their heavy clothes and jump for their lives.
It was every man for himself in the cold, black sea with swirling currents and six-foot waves. No one knew which way to swim. Malta was in Blackout. Then searchlights lit up the sky in the distance to show them the way as the island suffered yet another bombardment by Italian and German bombers ordered by Hitler to wipe Malta off the map.
Looking back at their sub lit up in the moonlight as it began to sink, the one thing that was to stay in the survivors’ minds were their shoes lined up in perfect order on deck.
Only nine men survived that gruelling swim to Malta. Eighty-seven died, including the commander, struggling against the waves as they made desperate attempts to call to each other and help those who were drowning. Another two men were just within sight of Malta gunners who saw them waving but they drowned before they could be saved. Some believed that two men were shot dragging themselves ashore when gunners thought they were Germans.
Gordon ‘Lucky’ Selby became a legend in the submarine service for surviving more sinkings than anyone in naval history. It is said that crewmen felt safe when they knew he was on board.
An ocean exploration team, using deep sea roving cameras, uncovered the perfectly upright submarine on the seabed, with its distinctive deck gun appearing ready for action and hatch eerily open, a few years ago.
Submariners from HM Naval Base Clyde travelled to Malta to commemorate the sub at a new memorial to its crew. The trip follows the discovery of the wreck by an ocean exploration team, led by American scientist Timmy Gambin using deep sea roving cameras.
The news captured the imagination of the world and was announced throughout The Commonwealth, Malta, America, Britain and elsewhere.
The story was picked up by news and navy websites; published in magazines and newspapers and followed by TV and radio broadcasters. It is now designated an Official War Grave. Selby became one the most decorated ratings in the history of the Submarine Service.
Chief Petty Officer Selby ‘Crossed the Bar’ peacefully in Australia on March 21, 2007. He was 87.
SPIRITS ARE SERVED AT THE BAR OF LONDON’S DEATH RAILWAY
Railway of the dead was big business
PEOPLE who travelled first class on the railways could travel First Class in death in Victorian Times and take their mourners with them.
This was the morbidly efficient solution to overcrowding in London’s cemeteries, carrying dead bodies and their families to a new, dedicated burial ground 25 miles away from the capital’s graveyards by train in 1854.
And if mourners got thirsty, they could drown their sorrows in a bar at either end of their journey.
Bodies and mourners could travel First, Second or Third Class, or even in special carriages for their different religious beliefs. Even an atheist carriage.
The Necropolis Railway journey ran from London’s Waterloo Station and ended in the middle of Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, from 1854 to 1941.
Newspaper stories were mixed. Some titles welcomed the service, others found it distasteful at such solemn times.
The Illustrated London News reported favourably on the journey’s “comforting country scenery, which provided a pleasant view for grieving passengers.”
The Yorkshire Post praised the rail company’s own patented ‘Earth to Earth’ coffin in 1887, which was designed to biodegrade quickly and address environmental concerns.
Charles Blomfield, the Bishop of London, expressed horror at mixing railway travel and funeral services, however. He argued that the “hurry and bustle” of rail travel was “inconsistent with the solemnity of a Christian funeral”.
He was also worried about the remains of morally “decent” people potentially travelling alongside those with “morally lax” lifestyles. And many people were squeamish about sharing carriages that had previously transported coffins, in case they were haunted.
Up to 2,000 bodies a year were transported from Westminster Bridge to their resting place and mourners would arrive at the station to watch steam-powered lifts raise the coffin of Uncle Joe from the ground floor into the train carriages.
Mourners who couldn’t afford the rail ticket to the grave could say goodbye to Joe in one of the station’s waiting rooms turned into a funeral chapel complete with organ at Waterloo.
But many of the rich and famous didn’t seem to mind the morbid journey. Journalist and author Rebecca West and others were happy to be buried at Brookfield.
However, years after it was built the Railway Magazine poetically and morbidly declared the station “the saddest in our islands”.
On January 12, 1867, a Necropolis train driver enjoyed a liquid lunch with mourners in the bar. When he reported back for duty to take them home, he wasn’t capable of driving the train. He was fired and a fireman took over.
One humorous epitaph to the Necropolis debate is a sign above the bar which read: “Spirits served here”.
DAY ORSON WELLS SPARKED HYSTERIA AS HE WARNED MARTIANS HAD LANDED
ON Halloween morning, 1938, newspapers in Britain reported nationwide hysteria in America over an invasion of aliens from Mars.
Police and newspapers across the United States were bombarded by phone calls that monsters from space had landed and there were reports of suicides.
The night before, actor Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion.
What had been 1890s-era England became 1930s-era New Jersey. and Welles played a university professor attempting to reckon with the news of the interstellar invaders.
The programme was so authentic that panic spread and if you listen to the broadcast now on YouTube, you can understand why so many people believed it.
At first, it starts with a series of breaking news updates based around Wells’s novel and keeps returning to a music programme featuring the pounding orchestral strains of Tchaikovsky’s “Piano Concerto No. 1.
If you missed the disclaimer at the beginning that it was a work of fiction, you were locked into full chilling invasion mode. It was that realistic … and with sound effects of shouts and reporters’ questions at the scene of the alien crash.
The programme keeps returning to dance music. “From the Meridian Room in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City,” says an announcer, “we bring you the music of Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra.”
Before listeners could say “cha-cha-cha,” however, news bulletins keep interrupting. One was: “Explosions have been detected on the surface of the Red Planet, and a meteorite — or, well, we think it’s a meteorite — has turned up in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.”
It became the first big fake news campaign in America. The day after the broadcast, newspapers ran sensational headlines about the ‘panic’.
Truth was that by blowing the story out of proportion, the newspaper industry hoped to make radio seem irresponsible and untrustworthy. They wanted to paint their new rival as a source of chaos, not credible information.
When the Martian dust settled, researchers found that of the six million listeners, only about 1.2 million were disturbed. Not a full-blown panic.
Wells said after the programme: “We aimed to show that people should not accept everything they hear on the radio as fact.”
He added he was “fed up with the way in which everything that came over this new magic box was being swallowed.”
POET WHO WAS WELL VERSED IN THE MURKY SECRETS OF THE HELLFIRE CLUB
DID YOU KNOW: The poet Paul Whitehead who died in 1774 helped create The Hellfire Club, an 18th-century secret society of wealthy and powerful men in Britain and Ireland who enjoyed excessive drinking, fornication and Satanic rituals.
According to The Times it was his job as steward of the unholy order to chalk the score of the blasphemous revellers on an abbey door.
“Members, some of them monks, would be scored by Whitehead on their drinking ability and sexual prowess,” the paper said quoting an historian’s report.
“Orgies were their pleasure and politics their pastime. Cocktails had names such as Strip Me Naked, Lay Me Down Softly and Gin and Sin.
“Roast beef would be served under the name, Devil’s Loins, – expertly cut into the shape of large buttocks and served with bread called Holy Ghost Pye.”
The club’s motto was: “Fay ce que voudras” – is translated as “Do as you please”.
TERRY MANNERS
3 November 2025
