Qualla: HMS Perseus (N36)

HMS Perseus (N36): Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Djmckee1, CC BY 3.0. Sixty men went down with HMS Perseus on the night of 6 December 1941. The Parthian-class submarine hit an Italian mine at 10 pm while transiting the Ionian Sea north of Zakynthos, sinking quickly in 52 metres of water. Of the 61 people on board, one survived: John Capes, a 31-year-old leading stoker who was not even part of the regular crew but hitching a passage to Alexandria. His escape from the sunken wreck — using emergency gear in the dark, at depth, alone — is one of the most extraordinary survival accounts of the Second World War.

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Image: Djmckee1 | CC BY 3.0

HMS Perseus (N36): The Men and the Mission

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Djmckee1, CC BY 3.0. Perseus was built at Barrow-in-Furness and launched in 1929, one of the Parthian class — submarines significant for being the first Royal Navy boats fitted with the Mark VIII torpedo. By 1940 she had been transferred from the China Station to the Mediterranean, where the strategi...

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Image: Djmckee1 | CC BY 3.0

HMS Perseus (N36): From the Seabed to the Shore

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Djmckee1, CC BY 3.0. Four men attempted the escape. Capes and three others reached the engine room's Twill Trunk escape hatch and pulled on Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus — rubber breathing bags designed to carry a man to the surface from a sunken submarine. The depth was 52 metres, far beyond what...

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Image: Djmckee1 | CC BY 3.0

HMS Perseus (N36): Doubt and Discovery

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Djmckee1, CC BY 3.0. For decades, Capes's story was treated with skepticism in some quarters. The accepted view held that a free ascent from 52 metres with the Davis apparatus was simply not survivable. Then in 1997 a Greek dive team led by Kostas Thoctarides located Perseus on the seabed, and the wr...

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Image: Djmckee1 | CC BY 3.0

HMS Perseus (N36): Remembrance

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Djmckee1, CC BY 3.0. In May 2000, memorial ceremonies were held on Cephalonia over two days. Relatives of the men who died came, as did members of the Submarine Old Comrades Association. John Capes's daughter attended. So did some of the islanders who had sheltered her father, and a crew member of th...

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Image: Djmckee1 | CC BY 3.0