Close enough to Touch
by Fred Lawless
Fred Lawless - Close enough to Touch
BBC Radio 4: The Saturday Playhouse
Broadcast: Saturday 27th September 1997 @ 2:30 p.m.
"Close Enough To Touch" is the dramatised story of the loss of the submarine HMS Thetis in Liverpool Bay on 1st June, 1939, which cost
99 lives.
The HMS/M Thetis was a brand new submarine, the third of the then modern and new class of submarine boats... the "T" class boats. She
was the first submarine built on Merseyside by Cammell Laird. She was the pride of the navy, of the men who built her and the men who
sailed in her. To so very many, ninety nine of them, she was soon to become their tomb. On her very first dive, her very first venture into the
element for which she had been designed and built, she died. Those with her, save four died too. So close to safety, with the stern above
water, the steel hull that should have protected them from the dangers of the deep, became their coffin wall. Why did this tragedy happen?
The play was recorded on location at the historic warship site, Birkenhead, Merseyside.
With Nicholas Farrell [Lieutenant-Commander Bolus, RN], David Fenwick [Leading Stocker Mack Arnold], John McArdle [Petty Officer
E. Mitchell], Russell Dixon [The Newsreader], Malcolm Hebden [Captain Oram], Michael Beckley [Lieutenant Woods], Angus Sutherland
[Lieutenant W. A. W. Poland, RN], Jeff Hordley [Lieutenant H. Chapman, RN], and Tom Higgins [Leading Seaman W. L. Hambrook].
Music composed and played by Paul Culligan.
Technical Presentation by Steve Brook.
Directed by Melanie Harris
90 minutes
Jim
