The Saturday Playhouse 9-27-97 Close Enough To Touch

"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.