It was the chilly winter night of December 6, 1941, and Navy stoker John Capes was dozing
off on his makeshift bunk bed made from an old torpedo tube. His vessel,
the Parthian-class British submarine HMS Perseus, surfaced calmly while recharging
her batteries under cover of the night near the shore of the Greek island of Kefalonia.
Suddenly, a massive explosion struck Perseus; the ship jerked violently,
throwing Capes off his bed and sending him flying through the air. The lights went out,
and he could feel the submarine dropping like an anvil amid the screaming sounds of the crew.
Water began pouring into the engine room as the air grew dense with smoke and fumes. As Capes
scrambled across the engine room, he discovered the door was locked due to the water pressure.
He then grabbed a flashlight and dragged as many injured men as he could toward an escape
hatch. At 270 feet below the surface, Capes knew they would continue to sink.
The brave man then seized his only tool for survival,
a bunch of Davis Submarine Escape Apparatuses that had only been tested at a depth of 100 feet,
and fitted three injured men and himself with them. After what seemed like eons,
he managed to release the hatch locking mechanism and leave the sinking submarine.
Even so, for the 31-year-old sailor, his survival story was just beginning…
A Communal Coffin
Built in 1929 and laid down in 1928,
the British Parthian-class submarine HMS Perseus was relatively new and the first
British vessel to be fitted with the formidable new Mark VIII torpedoes.
As World War 2 erupted, Perseus served under Commander Peter Bartlett as part
of the East Indies and China Station 4th Submarine Flotilla.
In 1941, the submarine was reassigned to the Mediterranean Sea, where she was
tasked with supporting the Allied supply efforts to the besieged island of Malta.
Perseus quickly began to pull her weight in the Mediterranean theater; under Commander
Edward Christian Frederick Nicolay, she sank the 3,867-ton Italian tanker Maya 5 in September,
followed by the 2,086-ton merchant ship Castellon the following month.
On November 26, she was sent from Malta to Alexandria and torpedoed a ship on
her way there, but she would never make it to her destination. On December 6,
at 10:00pm, HMS Perseus struck an Italian mine while recharging
her batteries on the surface off the coast of the Greek island of Kefalonia.
The explosion was devastating, and it tore a massive crack on her port side
near the bow section, causing her to sink almost immediately
and leaving the crew with no chance of escaping the quickly dropping wreckage.
For over a year, it was believed the tragic event had left no survivors. However,
several months later, the Royal Navy received unconfirmed reports of a survivor stranded on an
Axis-occupied Greek Island, a man who claimed to have escaped from the sinking Perseus.
The British military immediately prepared a covert rescue operation…
A Mystery Man
On May 30, 1943, a small fishing boat commissioned by the Royal Navy docked
on the Island of Kefalonia near the village of Mavrata. Carefully avoiding the constant
watch of German and Italian troops, they picked up a scrawny, black-haired
British man that claimed to have survived the sinking of HMS Perseus over 17 months before.
The lone survivor was smuggled to Turkey in an excruciating 400-mile journey.
Once in Turkey, John Capes presented himself to the British consulate,
after which he was sent to Alexandria, Egypt.
Finally free and inside British territory, the young survivor told the details of his
survival story, how he escaped the sinking ship, how he survived stranded at sea,
and how he managed to avoid capture for 18 months while hiding on an Axis-controlled island.
The British authorities confirmed his identity as a Navy man, and when he offered to go back into
submarine service, they more than welcomed his eagerness to serve; still, with no one
to confirm his far-fetched exploits, the Navy had its reservations about the veracity of his story.
Capes was eventually awarded the British Empire Medal,
but many Navy Officers were sure he was exaggerating many of the details of his deeds.
To begin with, there were no registers of any John Capes on the crew log of HMS Perseus,
and then there was his background; as a tall, dark, handsome man that had been educated at
the prestigious Dulwich College and was the heir of a renowned diplomat, he would naturally
have been officer class instead of one of the lowest level mechanics aboard a ship.
Known to be a formidable storyteller and an aficionado writer, most people assumed Capes
was making up the most incredible details of his story or at least drastically embellishing them.
As he was rescued, one of the officers attached a note to his file that read: (QUOTE) "The whole
of this escape should be treated with reserve, as there are various incidents difficult to account
for. Three different authorities who all saw this man separately are doubtful of the whole story.”
Fact or Fiction
Doubts regarding Capes's story began with his claim of being utterly unscathed after the
initial blast. Incredibly, he was the only man not severely injured, and he managed to
stand up and explore the sinking wreck as all the other crew members lay dead or agonizing.
Capes claimed to have found a working flashlight inside the claustrophobic
passages of the Perseus engine room while attempting to move with much
difficulty due to the submarine sinking bow first, or in a vertical position.
He added that he then started looking for survivors, but most of his crewmates had lost
their lives. He subsequently found the bulkhead door, but it was sealed shut by the pressure of
the sea, and he could see numerous streams of water leaking through the rubber seals.
Amid the bodies and debris, Capes reportedly found three injured strokers still alive, fitting them
with the experimental Davis "Rebreather" and then putting the device on himself.
He then gazed at the depth gauge and realized they were 270 feet underwater,
170 feet more than the Davis Rebreathers were supposed to endure.
Capes then found the emergency escape hatch,
which was not only bolted shut but also sealed by the ocean's pressure.
With the other sailors unable to help, Capes claimed to have located and opened
the sluice valve to flood the engine room and equalize the inside and outside pressure.
Convinced he wouldn’t make it out alive, Capes then took a final gulp from his rum bottle, put
it aside, and prepared to meet his fate. As the water began to rush in violently,
the stroker used a spanner to loosen the bolts holding the escape hatch closed.
Now completely underwater, Capes first pushed his crewmates out of the hatch
and then escaped the submarine. He then swam frantically toward the moonlight above him but
soon realized that if he ascended too quickly, the built-up pressure would burst his lungs.
As the rebreather reached its operating limit, Capes claimed to have become extremely dizzy,
and his chest burned unspeakably with each breath. But as he began to lose consciousness,
he broke through the surface and finally into the cold winter air…
In Hiding
According to Capes, he could not locate any of the other three strokers once on the surface.
He then saw a line of white cliffs in the distance, and using his rebreather as a
life vest, he swam in their direction, hoping the others would do the same.
Capes was found by local fishermen a few hours later lying unconscious on the Kefalonia shore
and was taken to the nearby village of Mavrata, which had been brutally ravaged by the war.
For the next 18 months, the local villagers risked their lives by hiding the British sailor
and moving him from house to house every time the Germans and Italians decided to do an inspection.
Hiding in crawl spaces, under floorboards, and in barns,
Capes barely survived and lost over 70 pounds.
The man dyed his hair black to avoid arousing suspicion and continued to hide even as all
hopes of rescue vanished. Still, whenever he was about to succumb to starvation,
the locals risked their lives to bring him food and supplies.
He would later recall: (QUOTE) "Always, at the moment of despair, some utterly poor but
friendly and patriotic islander would risk the lives of all his family for my sake."
The locals even gifted Capes a donkey,
but the only condition was that he could not eat the animal.
After several months of hiding and isolation,
Capes was able to contact the British Navy with the help of the local fishermen.
A few weeks later, he was rescued, but not even his rescuers believed his extraordinary exploits…
Redemption
John Capes passed away in 1985,
with most people believing he was a fraud who wanted to pass as a hero.
The British authorities couldn’t find any records of the man on the crew list, and they considered
that escaping from a depth of 270 feet was impossible, even with a rebreather device. Most
of all, British submarines were ordered to weld their hatches shut to avoid opening them during
depth charge attacks. As such, there was no way Capes could have opened the emergency hatch door.
Even so, the wreck of the Perseus was finally discovered on the seabed off the coast of
Kefalonia in 1997 at 170 feet underwater with the hatch opened exactly as Capes had described it.
Inside the vessel, they found the torpedo tube Capes had used as a
bunk bed and even the rum bottle he had mentioned.
Most importantly, they found a faulty depth gauge that still read 270 feet,
finally proving Capes's story and clearing his name…
Thank you for watching Dark Seas! For more thrilling military stories, click on your screen
and check out our other Dark Documentaries channels, where we delve into the fiercest
battles in modern history and the groundbreaking technology that made them possible. Stay tuned!