Sub wreck on Potato Garth
This week, we piece together the story of a derelict submarine which lay abandoned for years on Monkwearmouth Shore’s Potato Garth.
This area was used by prominent local shipbreaker Charles William Dorkin, who carried on a shipbreaking and dismantling business as CW Dorkin and Co.
Trading as B Fryer and Co, Metal and Machinery Brokers of 15-16 Hudson Road, Sunderland, Dorkin recognised the opportunity to profit from scrapping obsolete warships after the First World War.
The company bought up about two dozen surplus vessels from the Admiralty, several being redundant submarines.
One of these was the Kclass submarine K7. At 339 feet long and bizarrely powered on the surface by twin oil-fired steam turbines, K7 had been laid down at HM Dockyard, Devonport in 1915, launched in 1916 and commissioned in 1917.
Equipped with eight torpedo tubes and three guns, she carried a complement of 59 crew. Eighteen of the class were completed and while none were lost due to enemy action, six sank with considerable loss of life. K7 was the only one of its type to engage the enemy, hitting a German U-boat amidships with a torpedo which failed to explode.
She had also been damaged at what became known as the Battle of May Island in the Firth of Forth in 1918, when a disastrous chapter of accidents involving the 12th and 13th Submarine Flotillas resulted in the loss of two and damage to four K-class vessels as they sailed on exercise with elements of the Royal Navy surface fleet. 104 Naval personnel lost their lives.
K7 was sold to B Fryer and Co on September 9, 1921 and towed to the River Wear.
Apparently, the enormous submarine was beached close to the shoreline to allow her to be broken up but at some point, in a partially dismantled state, she broke adrift before grounding on Potato Garth about 400 feet East North East of Sand Point Ferry landing.
Although high and dry at low water springs, she created a hazard to navigation at other times. From October, 1923, the River Wear Commissioners (RWC) stationed a craft marked “Wreck” painted white on a green background at the spot and displaying two horizontally placed white lights during darkness.
Despite many attempts to move K7 further inshore, she remained fast and was still there early in 1929 when it was decided to use dynamite to shatter her hull. By July that year, all of the pieces had been lifted onto the beach and cut up, with smaller wreckage debris being removed by contractors.
CW Dorkin broke up at least eight other Royal Navy submarines after World War One, these being HMS G1, G2, G3, C18, C20, C24, C28 and C30.