'The Irish were the first to turn up': The sub, the fire, and the rescue effort

Twomey’s navigator duly turned the ship northbound and was bringing her up to normal cruising speed but it wasn’t fast enough. “I said ‘No, make best speed. Tell the engine room we’ll accept damage.’" The engineer was so stunned he rang up to clarify. “I said, ‘Yes, give me everything that we've got. We need to get to the north coast. It's a major search and rescue.’” 

The same day, on the far side of the Atlantic, Canadian Debbie Sullivan was excited going into work. A local TV reporter had done a story on the accomplishments of her only son, 32-year-old Lieutenant Christopher Saunders, a weapons system engineer in the Royal Canadian Navy. 

He had visited her three weeks earlier with his newborn son and two-year-old, promising to bring her back a souvenir from his next mission to Scotland, telling her he loved her. And now he was going to be on the 6 o’clock evening news. Debbie couldn’t wait.

‘We're gonna die like this’ 

Lt Saunders flew out to Faslane to join the 57-man crew of the diesel powered HMCS Chicoutimi, one of four used Royal Navy submarines that were sold to the Canadian Navy in a politically controversial deal worth $750million in 1998. 

It was formally taken in command by the Canadians on October 2, 2004. They left Faslane on Monday, October 4, under Captain Luc Pelletier on their maiden voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia. By 10am on Tuesday, October 5, the Chicoutimi was sailing on the surface at high speed through the choppy remnants of Hurricane Jeanne, about 200kms off the coast of Ireland.

Before they could dive however, a small defect was noticed on the upper conning tower. Repairs had just begun when a rogue wave washed over the boat, sending a torrent of seawater down the open hatch into the Control Room, the nerve centre of the boat. 

“It was sloshing around all corners and rushing everywhere as we rocked back and forth,” Combat Systems Engineering Chief Stuart Glen wrote in a diary excerpt seen by this newspaper. 

He was mopping up when he heard a sound that will stay with him the rest of his life: a series of “loud, popping explosions. Dozens of them, like popcorn going off in a microwave bag”. Then more explosions, rapid and very loud, this time directly in front of Glen’s only door.

"Fire, fire, fire, fire in the captain’s cabin" came blaring through the speakers. At the same time, someone on his deck was yelling "fire, fire, fire, fire in the Electrical Space." Two fires, on two decks, directly on top of each other.

A bright orange fireball flew into the room, just behind a solid black cloud of toxic smoke. “Within two seconds, visibility was zero and I began choking. I knew I was going to die; it was a certainty. There was no way out, and the smoke was blasting in,” he wrote. At that same moment, he felt a mask thrust into his hands. Everything went pitch black. All power was dead.

Submarine Cook Derek Speirs remembers it all “like it was yesterday”. He had been chatting in the mess when he heard the explosions. Someone handed him a mask — he was shaking so much, he couldn't plug it into the oxygen supply. “Finally, I grabbed my other hand and guided my hand to plug it in. And then I sat down and I just said “oh f***, we're gonna die like this’,” he told the Irish Examiner.

He remembers an eerie calm. “It's not like you see in the movies. Everyone was quiet and we were trying to help the injured people and get masks on them,” he said. 

The smoke was so thick that I had my hand in front of my face and I couldn't see it. And even with a flashlight, you couldn't see anything.

Not knowing whether they would survive or not, Speirs photographed as much as he could. He took the SD card out, stuck it in a Ziploc bag with a note and taped it onto the galley door. 

“In case we all died at least somebody could find this and just see what condition we were in. I wanted to make sure that we would never be forgotten,” he said. 

Up on Deck 1, someone tripped over the prone form of Lt. Saunders and found an EBS mask hanging half off him. He had been breathing the toxic smoke for several minutes.

‘The Irish were first to show up’ 

Satellite distress calls were made to Halifax, who in turn alerted the Irish, British and US navies. The British scrambled two frigates, the HMS Montrose and HMS Marlborough but it would be Wednesday before they arrived on scene. 

The sea conditions were deemed too dangerous to attempt an evacuation of sailors suffering from smoke inhalation. In the meantime, they were bobbing about like a barrel in rough seas, powerless and adrift. Peering through the periscope however, something unexpected appeared: fishing boats. 

“The Irish were the first to show up,” said Speirs. Glen too recalls how “unasked, they quietly took up station behind us, as we drifted in the immediate aftermath, fully prepared to rescue as many survivors as possible should we have lost our vessel. 

I've never forgotten that, and this is the only part of the story that never fails to fill my voice with emotion on those rare occasions that I talk about what happened all those years ago. 

Jens Bach was one of those fishermen. The 32-year-old Donegal skipper of the ‘Western Endeavour’ had been searching for horse mackerel about 100 miles away, when he heard about the stricken submarine. There was no more mackerel fishing that day or the next. 

Faslane accepted his offer to stand by but ordered him not to go within one nautical mile of the submarine. “I remember the one nautical mile distinctly because I couldn't believe it,” said Bach. “We headed on out and we stayed with it for two days,” he said. 

“There was a big, big swell. We could see it in the distance, a mile away. The weather conditions were poor and all you could see was the tower, now and again,” he said. He still believes that if allowed he could have evacuated the injured men that day despite the storm blowing. 

“A fire at sea is one of the worst things. On that ocean, it doesn't matter how big you are, you're only a dot. You need all the help you can get. We could have got those casualties off and taken them to within helicopter range,” he said.

The injured men remained on the sub that night while trained medic Speirs tended to them. “Chris was conscious but he wasn’t good. He just wanted to go home,” he said. 

“It wasn't until the next day that we were able to evacuate Chris and the two other guys because the weather was too bad. That first night was just awful.” 

A second fire broke out the next morning but was quickly extinguished. By 2.45pm Wednesday, the condition of three men had deteriorated and they were finally evacuated by a British helicopter. “Chris took all his power to climb up that tower and to get himself off the boat,” said Speirs. 

En route to hospital in Derry, he took a turn for the worse and they diverted to Sligo hospital. Lt. Saunders was pronounced dead a short time later. A silence descended on the crew when Captain Pelletier informed them of the news.

By 6pm the Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin would announce it in the Canadian House of Commons. Debbie Sullivan’s husband knew she would be tuning in to the news for very different reasons but he couldn’t get to her in time to tell her in person. 

“He had to tell me that on the phone because he knew I was going to be watching the news at six, so I almost learned about my son's death on the news like everybody else,” she said. “After that, everything was a blur. I just remember running and screaming.” 

Nobody to call 

By now the Irish Naval Service had deployed their nearest ship, the L.É. Roisín in Donegal but the high seas ripped a hole in her bow and she had to turn back. It was now up to the. L.É. Aoife to get there as fast as they could from Cork and assume the duties of on-scene commander of the international rescue operation.

“The submariners were on a boat that had no power, no heat, no hot water,” said Twomey. “They were now aware that one of their shipmates was dead and two were injured, still in hospital. This was a big deal. We'd never seen anything like this before in Irish waters. Everybody was interested to find out what was actually going on,” he said.

It took until Thursday, October 7, for the Royal Navy to attach a tow line. The British frigates, designed for speed, got battered in the heavy seas. But the North Atlantic was L.É. Aoife’s “bread and butter” — tying up alongside big vessels in a storm and transferring supplies with ease was no problem to her crew. 

Their seamanship skills were “a source of significant pride,” said Twomey. “We might not have been the same size as the others, but we were proven to be able to do what was needed in the conditions and the water that we operated in. So, it was gratifying for the crew to recognize that they had a skill set that was indeed extraordinary.” 

In the middle of it all, on October 8 one of his own crew fell ill and also had to be airlifted to Sligo hospital. The L.É. Aoife escorted the tow operation until Saturday, October 9, when Chicoutimi exited Irish waters. 

Members of the Irish Naval Service performed a guard of honour at Sligo Airport for Lt. Saunders' remains. He was the first foreign serviceman to die on active duty on Irish soil since World War Two and the first Canadian submariner to die on duty since 1955. 

In 2005 a formal board of inquiry determined the fire was caused by human, technical and operational factors but cleared the commanding officer and crew of any blame. 

“The courage of the sailors, the courage of the people that stayed on board to save the submarine was just incredible,” said Twomey. 

They fought and they saved their boat. And they deserve incredible credit for that. The fire wasn't their fault.

In recognition of their help the Royal Canadian Navy presented the INS with a certificate of achievement which is displayed in the Officer's Mess at the Naval Base in Haulbowline.

Skipper Jens Bach never received any official acknowledgement or thanks from either the Canadian or British navies for standing by that week. Captain Pelletier was the only person to privately thank him.

Amid the 20th anniversary, there are no plans by either the Canadian Government or navy to commemorate the courage of the Chicoutimi crew or to honour Lt Saunders. Neither the Royal Canadian Navy nor the Minister for National Defence of Canada Bill Blair responded to requests for comment. 

It’s no surprise to military historian David Bercuson who believes the current government doesn’t want to remind the public of the controversial 1990s deal.

“People were asking why the Canadian government was buying those submarines. And of course, the answer was because the government was saving money,” he said. 

“I don't know that they’d really want to say, well, guess what happened 20 years ago? These submarines that we acquired from the Brits weren't very good. And one of our guys died in one on their way over from the UK.”

The absence of official commemoration rankles with Speirs, who is currently President of the Canadian Veterans Association. He experienced a PTSD-induced seizure following the incident, which resulted in six fractured vertebrae and him being medically released from service.

“Chris, unfortunately, is not with us anymore. And it's important that he must never be forgotten for the sacrifice that he gave regardless of political issues. We were sent to do a job, and we did it to the best of our ability. Everyone should get a medal. We all saved the boat. It was pushed under the rug, and we were tossed aside like garbage,” he said.

On October 5, Derek Speirs will mark the anniversary with a few fellow survivors. Debbie Sullivan will mourn her son Chris quietly, “like I do every year.” She still has the Scotch cookies and Scottish teabags found in his belongings. 

“I just don't want his name to ever be forgotten. I want him to be remembered as the good man he was. Because he was definitely a good man.”