[1] She was laid down at the Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead on 16 January 1944, launched on 12 April and commissioned on 25 November 1945.

For work in the Far East she was equipped with refrigeration and two huge air conditioners, and all her accommodation was placed as far away from the engine room as possible.

The following four years Affray was on travel and took part in exercises all over the globe, visiting such places as Australia, Singapore, Japan, Morocco, South Africa, Pearl Harbor and Bergen.

In March she was brought out of reserve, and Lieutenant John Blackburn DSC was appointed CO and given the task of bringing her and the new crew up to operational status.

On 16 April 1951, Affray set out on a simulated war mission called Exercise Spring Train.

The exercise was expected to continue until Affray was due to return to base on 23 April for essential defect repairs including a leak in a battery tank.

HMS Agincourt led a fleet of search vessels which eventually totalled 24 ships from four nations.

Sirdar later sat on the bottom for six hours while the ASDIC boats familiarised themselves with the identification of a submarine in this position.

[2] Differing accounts however state that a tapping, initially believed to be from the trapped crew, was heard, but after later investigation was ruled by the admiralty to be from other ships involved in the search.

The disappearance of Affray became a prominent news item in Britain, and relegated the first events that culminated in the Suez Crisis to page two of the national newspapers.

During the search many strange things happened, including that the wife of a skipper of one of Affray's sister submarines claimed to have seen a ghost in a dripping wet submarine officer's uniform telling her the location of the sunken sub (this position later turned out to be correct)[4]— she recognised him as an officer who had died during the Second World War, not a crew member of Affray.

As there were so many shipwrecks littering the English Channel (161 were found, most of them sunk during the Second World War), it was almost two months before Affray was located.

HMS Reclaim arrived several hours later after an excited call from the Captain of Loch Insh who, as an ex-submariner was convinced this was Affray.

A dive was made down to the contact and the diver reported seeing a long white handrail before being dragged along with the flow of the current.

The only external clue that the crew had done anything to rectify their dilemma was the bow hydroplanes being set to hard arise; the bridge telegraphs also were in the stop position.

After a detailed inspection of the snort mast itself, which showed no sign of being struck, it was thought more likely that it had been broken when the submarine hit the bottom (the snort mast was later tested and although it was found to be of faulty manufacture, tests indicated it should still have stood up to normal use)[citation needed].

is that the snort mast dropped below the surface and the float valve (described above) jammed or somehow failed to stop the water entering the sub.

[citation needed] Almost half a century after the loss, Innes McCartney, an experienced trimix diver obtained the position of Affray from the Ministry of Defence and dived to the sunken submarine.

Little ambient light penetrates to 83 metres even on a good day on the edge of Hurd Deep and it was a while before we recognised the unmistakable shape of a submarine.

She is a hugely impressive sight, sitting almost totally clear of a hard seabed, offering in excess of 10 metres of relief in places.

She is one of the largest submarine wrecks in the Channel and a diver is hard pushed to swim all the way around her on a single dive.

As of 2001, under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, Affray was made a controlled site,[7] making it illegal to dive her without a permit from the Ministry of Defence.