Over the centuries, navies around the world have observed a hallowed tradition: The commanding officer of a warship at sea should never surrender his ship to the enemy. In the U.S. Navy, this tradition dates back to the War of 1812 with Great Britain. In June 1813, Captain James Lawrence commanded USS Chesapeake during a single-ship duel with HMS Shannon off Boston Harbor. Mortally wounded during the battle, Lawrence was carried below, where he repeatedly urged his crew, ‘Don’t give up the ship.’ Lawrence’s immortal plea implies fighting to the last man or perhaps scuttling, but never surrendering. A flag bearing that admonition was flown by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry during his sweeping American victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie in September 1813, shortly after Lawrence’s death. Today, that tattered flag is displayed in Memorial Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy, where its history and significance are impressed upon midshipmen.

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But history also suggests that Lawrence’s implied prohibition of surrender may not always apply. Sometimes the circumstances surrounding a battle may dictate a different course of action. The tale of the British submarine HMS Seal illustrates how the exigencies of battle can force a commander to make a difficult decision.

Seal was a double-hulled, minelaying submarine of the Porpoise class, built at Chatham Dockyard during 1934–37 and commissioned in May 1939. Each of the six Porpoise-class boats could carry a full load of 50 mines located in a long, high casing above the pressure hull. The casing was fitted on a rail to the stern by a chain mechanism. The mines carried were the standard British Mark XVI self-mooring type, and were released from the boat through a hatch in the stern. The system was relatively simple, and minelaying operations were normally safe and expeditious. One disadvantage of the high casing above the pressure hull, however, was the resulting massive silhouette the boats presented when they cruised on the surface.

Seal was armed with one 4-inch gun forward on deck and two movable Lewis machine guns that could be mounted on the conning tower. She carried six 21-inch torpedo tubes forward, with one reload for each tube. Seal was powered by two diesel engines, each driving one propeller. The boat could make nearly 16 knots on the surface, but was normally restricted to four knots while cruising on battery power submerged. A standard crew for Porpoise-class boats was 59 men. A relatively large submarine, Seal displaced about 1,800 tons surfaced and more than 2,100 tons submerged.

The first and only commanding officer of HMS Seal was Lt. Cmdr. Rupert P. Lonsdale, an experienced submarine skipper who had commanded another boat before being assigned to Seal. After fitting out, Seal engaged in continuous patrol and escort duties in the Atlantic and off Norway commencing with the start of World War II in September 1939. It was not until April 1940, however, after undergoing a yard overhaul at Blyth, Scotland, that Seal carried out her first minelaying operation.

In preparation for this voyage, Seal loaded her full complement of 50 mines. Her mission, Operation FD7, was to enter the Strait of Skagerrak and proceed to the much more difficult and dangerous Strait of Kattegat. There she was to lay her minefield. The Admiralty assigned two nearby alternate sites in case Seal could not safely enter the primary minelaying location. The Kattegat was a dangerous place for a large minelaying submarine, as it was heavily patrolled by enemy aircraft and ships. Seal set out on this mission on April 29, 1940.

At 0130 on May 4, Seal entered the Kattegat on the surface, although Captain Lonsdale had trimmed down the boat so that the conning tower was awash. Daylight came early on May mornings in this northern latitude, and Lonsdale feared the imposing silhouette of his submarine would not remain undetected for long. He was right. Lonsdale dived Seal at 0230, only minutes before full dawn broke and just seconds before an approaching German reconnaissance aircraft dropped a bomb nearby, causing minor damage.

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