Tour Scotland short 4K travel video clip, with Scottish music, of the North memorial stained glass window in the Holy Trinity Church at East Port on ancestry, genealogy, family history visit and trip to Dunfermline, Fife, Britain, United Kingdom. Gifted by Mr and Mrs North in memory of their son Sub Lieutenant Frank North who died in HMS Affray, a British Amphion class submarine which was the last Royal Navy submarine to be lost at sea, on 16 April 1951, with the loss of 75 lives. Affray was built in the closing stages of the Second World War. She was one of 16 submarines of her class which were originally designed for use in the Pacific Ocean against Japan. She was laid down at the Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead, England, on 16 January 1944, launched on 12 April and commissioned on 25 November 1945. She was sent to the submarine tender HMS Montclare at Rothesay, as part of the 3rd Submarine Flotilla, before joining her sisters HMS Amphion, Astute, Auriga, Aurochs and the submarine tender HMS Adamant in the British Pacific Fleet. The following four years Affray was on travel and took part in exercises all over the globe, visiting such places as Australia, Singapore, Japan, Morocco, South Africa, Pearl Harbor and Bergen. On 16 April 1951, Affray set out on a simulated war mission called Exercise Spring Train. The submarine had a reduced crew of 50 from 61. They were joined by one sergeant, one corporal, and two marines from the Special Boat Service; a commander Engineer, a naval instructor, seven lieutenants in the engineering branch, and 13 sub-lieutenants. The last two groups were undergoing an essential submarine officer training course. This made her complement 75 in total. Her captain's orders were unusually flexible: the Marines were to be dropped off somewhere along the south west coast of England, the captain told the Admiralty he had chosen an isolated beach in Cornwall to come ashore and return under the cover of darkness. The exercise was expected to continue until Affray was due to return to base on 23 April for essential defect repairs including a leak in a battery tank. Affray left her home base at about 1600 hrs, and made normal contact to confirm position, course, speed etc at 2100 hrs, and indicated she was preparing to dive. The last ship to see her on the surface was the destroyer HMS Contest returning to Portsmouth that evening. As they passed each other, both vessels piped the side. When she missed her 0800 report due the next day she was declared missing and an immediate search began. On 14 June the primary search vessel HMS Loch Insh made a sonar contact on the very edge of Hurds Deep, a deep underwater valley in the English Channel. It was the same location where an oil slick had been sighted at the same time Affray vanished and was in an area that had been searched before. HMS Reclaim arrived several hours later after an excited call from the Captain of Loch Insh who, as an ex-submariner, was convinced this was Affray. A dive was made down to the contact and the diver reported seeing a long white handrail before being dragged along with the flow of the current. Due to the weather being worse than usual the crew decided to use the underwater camera that they had previously been sceptical of. As soon as it was sent down the very first thing the camera picked up were the letters YARFFA or Affray backwards. At last she had been found. She was 17 miles northwest of Alderney, a lot closer to France than England. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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