Trevor Laffan: What lies beneath? A century of submarines prowling harbour

I grew up in the 1960s in Cobh in a house that directly overlooked the Cork harbour area.

At night, the harbour was a dark and mysterious place and as a child I spent many hours trying to spot the pirates I was sure were planning to pillage and plunder us while we slept in our beds.

I was convinced there were monsters prowling the depths too. I kept watch, ready to alert the town when any of them came to the surface. I would raise the alarm and save everyone.

This was only a night-time duty because pirates and monsters never appeared during daylight hours. Everyone knew that.

I never did see any unusual activity, but the darkness would have made that impossible anyway. Whitegate Oil Refinery had some lighting, and you could see the beacon at the Roches Point lighthouse and the flashing light on the Spitbank lighthouse, but back then there was little other illumination.

It was probably even darker back in 1905 and communication was less sophisticated too, so details of the movement of ships in and out of the harbour would only have been known to a certain few, or to those who had an interest in that type of activity.

So, there must have been some excitement when a submarine appeared travelling up the river in February that year.

The Cork Examiner reported that a British submarine A5, along with its parent ship the HMS Hazard, visited Cork for the purpose of demonstrating this new vessel to visiting officers and dignitaries.

It was the first submarine to be seen at the Haulbowline Naval Base, so it attracted a great deal of attention. A large number of people came out to view the new arrival, which was moored with HMS Hazard at the Irish Naval Base near the Black Prince Pier in Monkstown.

Residents were in for a shock though when, on the morning of February 16, an explosion on the submarine shook the neighbourhood and partially destroyed the sub. A short time later that explosion was followed by another.

A subsequent inquiry determined that the explosions were caused by a build-up of fuel vapour which was ignited by a spark from a switch when the main engine was turned on.

Six crewmen died that morning and 11 were injured. Five of the dead were buried soon after in the Old Church Cemetery outside Cobh and the town virtually closed down for the funeral as a mark of respect. The body of the sixth crew member was repatriated to the UK.

Since then, many submarines have paid courtesy visits to our shores, but not all of them were forthcoming about their activities.

In 1983, the Cork Examiner ran another story about the secrecy surrounding the identity, location, and function of a naval vessel from which a heart patient was airlifted to Cork.

The crewman concerned was on board a nuclear submarine operating off Ireland’s south-west coast. The U.S defence authorities had hushed up the fact that one of their nuclear submarines was at the centre of the rescue mission. The U.S embassy in Dublin merely referred to the vessel as a “warship”.

The crewman was airlifted successfully from the deck of the submarine by helicopter to the Cork Regional Hospital and was later said to be in a “comfortable” condition.

The military attaché at the U.S embassy insisted he didn’t know the identity or type of vessel involved, but it was subsequently identified as a nuclear submarine cruising in the Atlantic.

The American reluctance to go public on the affair was explained by the fact that their submarines are regularly shadowed in international waters by their Russian counterparts as well as being monitored by Soviet ‘spy’ ships and satellites.

Similar surveillance is carried out in turn by the Americans.

In 2023, the Irish Examiner reported that a Russian submarine had positioned itself directly outside the entrance to Cork Harbour but was “chased off” by a British helicopter and warship because our depleted navy didn’t have the equipment to detect potential underwater threats.

The submarine was just outside the 12-mile limit, so it didn’t break any international laws, but military sources had indicated that such events around the Irish coast were becoming more common.

Military insiders say the Russians are probing British defence systems as they realise the UK is vulnerable on its western flank because the Irish navy had no sonar capabilities on the two ships that were still operational, meaning they couldn’t detect what was going on underwater.

The incident with the Russian submarine occurred directly south of the entrance to Cork Harbour. A Russian-registered ‘civilian’ vessel was accompanying the submarine at the time and was believed to be acting as its ‘surface surveillance’.

There have been other incidents with the Russians too in recent years. Russian bombers have flown down Ireland’s west coast, at times with their transponders switched off, a hazardous action in the context of civil air routes.

In 2024, The Echo reported that Russian attack submarines had conducted missions around the Irish Sea twice since the invasion of Ukraine.

Two years earlier, a Russian live fire naval exercise in the Irish Maritime Exclusive Economic Zone was moved westward after protests from Irish fishermen who put to sea in a flotilla. They pointed out that the exercises were set to take place in rich fishing grounds, in an area of the Atlantic where many transatlantic undersea cables converge, and this raised serious concerns in western capitals.

Concerns had also been expressed that Russian ships were mapping sea-beds off Ireland.

It turns out that my childhood suspicions were right all along; the harbour is a mysterious place.

Who knows what other skulduggery is taking place beneath our waters?

Maybe I should return home to keep watch.