Altogether she sank 17 merchant ships, totalling 38,000 tons, plus 5 warships and 24 sailing vessels, and was involved in an attack on Corfu harbour that won her captain, Lieutenant Commander (Lt.

In March 1941 she sailed from Portsmouth on her first offensive patrol, to intercept the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were heading for Brest after their raiding sortie in the North Atlantic.

Unable to find them, Torbay was ordered to continue to Gibraltar, and, after another patrol in the Mediterranean, to join the 1st Flotilla at Alexandria.

The Torbay, among others, continued to evacuate Allied stragglers who were not captured and interned as POWs when Crete was surrendered to the Germans on 1 June.

On 22 August 1941, after a night run on the surface, 130 men (including 62 New Zealanders and 63 British and Australian troops) crammed aboard the Torbay were safely delivered to Alexandria, Egypt, “establishing a record for the number of people ever jammed into one submarine.”[3][4] The Torbay’s commander, Lieutenant Commander Anthony ‘Crap’ Miers, VC, was eccentric, and he made it a ritual – ‘Usual Drill, Number One’ – to salute the Vichy French sailors aboard French ships at anchor in Alexandria, Egypt, every time he entered the port.

He had his crew assemble on deck and, on order, they dropped their trousers and ‘mooned’ the Vichy French sailors as they entered the harbor.

On 15 December 1941 Torbay torpedoed an Italian merchant ship in German service, Sebastiano Veniero, at Methoni in the Peloponnese.

Sebastiano Veniero was already beached after having been damaged a week earlier by a torpedo fired by the Grampus-class submarine HMS Porpoise.

The submarine later surfaced, intending to attack GA 45 with her deck gun, but the German vessel opened fire and forced her to break off the action.