Navy News
Direct from the front-line, the official newspaper of the Royal Navy, Navy News, brings you the latest news, features and award winning photos every month.
Tragic Triumph permanently remembered at HMS Raleigh
26 November 2025
Submariners at HMS Raleigh were given an in-depth dive into the heroics and sacrifices of their wartime forebears.
For 12 months HMS Triumph was the scourge of Axis forces in the Mediterranean, sinking or damaging a string of Italian merchant vessels and warships, then conducting covert missions to land and recover agents operating behind enemy lines.
It was on one such mission in the Aegean that she was lost with all hands at the end of 1941/beginning of 1942.
Seven decades later former sailor Gav Don began researching the boat’s history – his uncle served aboard her.
The 64-year-old from Northumberland joined the Navy as an Ordinary Seaman in 1981 and left six years later as a Warfare Lieutenant. He began looking into Triumph’s story when he retired from his second career in investment, geopolitics and entrepreneurial finance.
Gav tracked down some 200 descendants of Triumph's crew, who’ve subsequently formed the Triumph Family Association, and gathered a wealth of narrative sources revealing the story of the boat’s year in the Mediterranean in 1941 and the circumstances of her loss.
He presented the results of his 15 years’ research – which have been captured in a book – to personnel from the RN Submarine School at Raleigh, giving them an insight into life in a wartime boat, the challenges crew faced and not least the tension and danger of each patrol.
From his research into Triumph, Gav believes the intelligence gathering and special operations she carried out proved as effective in the fight against the Axis powers as the torpedoes fired at enemy shipping.
He concluded his Triumph talk by presenting Raleigh’s wardroom with a medal board – a commemorative board showing all of the medals won by Triumph's ship's company during the war and a message of love and affection from the Triumph families.
Also hosted by the Torpoint establishment on the same day was local resident Frances Impey, niece of an HMS Triumph crewman.
She presented the wardroom with a sketch of the heavy cruiser HMS Raleigh in Plymouth Sound, around 1921 (the base itself was established in 1940). The sketch was made by Sibyl Jerram, Frances’ great aunt while she and her husband Charles were living in Stonehouse Barracks across the water in Plymouth.
Frances said: “It was extraordinary that I should find that sketch on the morning of my visit to HMS Raleigh, I was looking for something else, and it just fell out of the scrap book.”
One Submarine's Secret War Against the Axis: HMS Triumph, SOE and MI9 in the Mediterranean 1941 is published by Pen and Sword, priced £25.