Submariners’ Remembrance Service and Parade

Four hundred serving and veteran submariners – including men who served in World War 2 – will attend the annual service of remembrance and parade at Middle Temple Gardens on the Embankment.

If you are in London this Sunday and want to pay your respects to the thousands of submariners on eternal patrol, your timing could not be better. 

The north bank of the Thames has been the venue for the Submariners’ Remembrance Service and Parade going all the way back to 1923 – one year after the monument to the Silent Service was dedicated on Victoria Embankment between Blackfriars Bridge and Waterloo Bridge.

It depicts a submarine crew, statues of Truth and Justice, 40 anchor-shaped wreath hooks and lists the submarines lost in both World Wars.

With construction work taking place on a cycle super highway directly in front of the monument, this year the service will be held in the nearby gardens, before more than 30 wreaths are laid on the memorial at the end of proceedings.

During the moving service, a roll call of every Royal Navy submarine lost will be read by submariners of several generations.

And a wreath on behalf of submariners’ widows will be laid by Gillian Molyneux, whose husband Lieutenant Commander Ian Molyneux was killed in the shooting incident on board the submarine HMS Astute in Southampton in 2011.

Guests of honour include Admiral of the Fleet the Lord Boyce, patron of the Submariners’ Association; the association’s president Rear Admiral Niall Kilgour; and Michael Welbank the Chief Commoner of London.

The head of the Submarine Service, Rear Admiral John Weale, will take the salute.

Proceedings begin at 10am on Sunday and are due to conclude around mid-day.