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lore is a part of life aboard a
submarine can really suck they're
usually super cramped they smell
horrible and you can go weeks or even
months without even seeing the Sun they
can be claustrophobic to the extreme and
the only thing worse than living on a
submarine is sinking to the bottom of
the ocean in a broken one let's rewind
back to World War two and specifically
the Mediterranean theater the British
Navy was fighting for control over the
sea with the Italian Navy but the often
crystal-clear waters were a death trap
for submarines on both sides some were
bombed from the air
others were attacked by ships with depth
charges and others just ran into mines
there were a lot of occupational hazards
and as a result two out of five British
submarines that enter the Mediterranean
during the war would sink and usually
whenever a submarine does sink it
becomes a mass iron coffin for all of
the crew unlucky enough to be on board
throughout the course of the war the
British Navy lost 79 submarines and out
of those there were only four successful
escapes which implies that if you went
down in one your odds of escape stood at
only 5% but out of those four successful
escapes however the most fantastic one
is the lesser-known story of the HMS
Perseus and the sole survivor onboard
HMS Perseus was a submarine that was
assigned to Alexandria in British Egypt
their main objective was to covertly
transport supplies to the besieged
island of Malta a strategic British
outpost in the center of the
Mediterranean on the 26th of November
1941 the sub left Malta back to
Alexandria for more supplies with the
sidequest along the way of patrolling
the waters of the southern Aegean around
the islands of Greece unfortunately at
10:00 p.m. on the night of the 6th of
December Perseus struck an Italian mine
just off the coast of the island of
kefalonia and began to sink on board
were 61 men 59 of them being crew
members and two of them passengers one
of those two passengers was a man named
John capes who would somehow
miraculously go on to become the sole
survivor aboard
perseus after the sub struck the mine
capes was awoken in his bunk inside of
an empty torpedo tube by a loud
explosion that threw him across the
compartment all of the lights went out
the sub twisted and plunged down into
the dark depths of the cold sea before
smashing down on the surface 170 feet
beneath sea level capes discovered that
he could still manage to stand up in the
darkness and after rummaging around he
luckily discovered a flashlight through
the darkness and in the increasingly
foul air and rising water level inside
capes managed to find his way into the
subs engine room after passing by the
mangled corpses of at least a dozen dead
along the way however this was as far as
he could go because the room on the
other side of the door on the far end
was already completely full of water
he began quickly searching for anybody
else he could discover that was still
alive and managed to find three other
men who he brought together in the
engine room they moved up towards the
escape chamber and hatch right above the
room where they discovered pairs of
escape suits unfortunately for them
however these escape suits were only
tested for a maximum depth of 100 feet
beneath water and they only had enough
oxygen for that amount of distance their
gauges were reading that they were 270
feet beneath water but unknown to them
their gauges were actually broken they
were in fact 171 feet beneath water but
even still that meant that they would
all have to swim that final 71 feet
without any oxygen and they all believed
that they would have to swim for 171
feet without oxygen nobody in history
had ever done that before and so they
knew that they would be breaking the
world record attempt up to that point
for the deepest ever escape if they
succeeded time and oxygen inside of the
sub was running out so they had no other
choice
capes took one final swig from a bottle
of rum flooded the escape compartment
and with great difficulty managed to
release the damaged bolts on the escape
hatch and pushed the other three men out
first before he ventured out as well
there was of course one other big
problem that all the men knew they would
be facing though swimming up rapidly to
the sea surface from a depth of hundreds
of feet would be a dramatic change in
pressure on all of their bodies which
they knew would likely induce the bends
a state where gases inside of the body
start to bubble up this can cause
enormous amounts of pain paralysis and
even death
in extreme cases but it was either risk
dying from the bends or guaranteed
drowning in the sub so they all took
their chances anyway
but suddenly capes popped up above the
surface on the cold December night he
was severely suffering from the bends
and the pain he was experiencing inside
of his lungs was certainly enormous but
his ordeal was far from being over none
of the other three men ever made it up
to the surface so he was left all alone
he did spot a set of white cliffs
belonging to the Greek island of
Kefalonia in the distance so he set out
and began desperately swimming towards
them the shore was five miles away but
somehow capes actually managed to reach
it because he was discovered washed up
on the beach and unconscious by a couple
local Greek fishermen the next morning
but at the time the island was occupied
by the Italian army so he was forced to
hide and stay underground in his
rescuers home for the next 18 months of
his life capes was passed from house to
house on the island as he attempted to
evade capture by the Italians he lost 70
pounds of weight during this time and he
even dyed his hair black to try and
blend in more with the locals finally
though 18 months later in May 1943 after
he became the sole survivor of his
submarine sinking and becoming a
washed-up refugee the Royal Navy
organized a rescue operation he was
smuggled away from Kefalonia aboard a
humble fishing boat and taken over to
Smyrna in neutral Turkey from there he
was finally able to complete his journey
to alexandria 18 months later than he
had anticipated and for his heroism
capes was awarded the British Empire
medal but despite that most people
doubted that his survival story was true
capes his name didn't appear on the
Perseus as crew list when it departed
from Malta after all and British
submarine commanders were previously
ordered to bolt their escape hatches
shut from the outside in order to
prevent them from getting blown off
during a depth charge attack
were no witnesses to back up caves his
story he had a reputation for being a
great and natural storyteller and his
account of offense would change over the
course of decades following the end of
the war and his claim of escaping from a
depth of 270 feet simply made things
even harder to accept for most people
john capes was widely considered to be a
liar and an imposter by the time he died
in 1985
it wasn't until 12 years after his death
in 1997 that his incredible tale of
survival could finally be verified and
proven the wreck of the HMS Perseus was
finally discovered at the bottom of the
Mediterranean - that year off the coast
of Catalonia and across a series of
dives to it researchers discovered the
empty torpedo tube that capes and made
his bunk in the escape hatch compartment
opened exactly as he had described it
and even the bottle of rum that he
claimed he had taken a final swig from
before leaving the depth was confirmed
to be at 171 feet and the gauges reading
270 feet were indeed broken inside the
wreck of the Perseus was found exactly
the way that John capes had described it
which forever vindicated him and his
story as the submarines sole survivor
it's simply tragic that he didn't live
long enough to get the recognition that
he deserved the discovery of the Perseus
wreck in the 90s gave historians all the
information they needed to verify John
capes a story so if you're curious to
learn more about what exactly happened
the night it sank and how capes managed
to survive you should check out the full
feature-length documentary the Perseus
survivor available right now on
curiosity stream you'll see the actual
submarine itself and dive deep into the
evidence of John capes 'as extraordinary
survival with far more information in
detail than you've just watched in this
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