THE commander of a Barrow submarine won the Victoria Cross but gave his life in the process during another attempt to eliminate the threat to shipping posed by the former German battleships Goeben. 

The Goeben, then serving in the Turkish navy as Yuvuz Sultan Selim, came to grief in the Battle of Imbros on January 20 in 1918. 

It had attacked British ships and the naval base at Mudros before hitting a mine. 

The ship was beached in the Dardanelles and subjected to days of air attacks before being towed to safety. 

The Barrow-built submarine E14 was sent to finish off the battleship – not knowing about the successful Turkish salvage operation. 

Finding the ship gone, the E14 captain, Lt-Cmdr Geoffrey Saxon White, sought other targets. 

He attacked a merchant vessel before a faulty torpedo exploded close to the submarine. 

The Barrow boat was flooding and was forced to the surface – facing a barrage of Turkish shore artillery off Kumkale. 

The captain was killed and E14 sank with nine surviving crew members taken prisoner. 

Lt-Cmdr White, 31, was awarded the Victoria Cross for his self-sacrifice to save the crew after his boat was damaged by the premature explosion of one of its own torpedoes. 

His medal citation in the London Gazette noted: “Soon afterwards the boat became out of control, and as the air supply was nearly exhausted, Lt-Cmdr White decided to run the risk of proceeding on the surface. 

“Heavy fire was immediately opened from both sides, and, after running the gauntlet for half-an-hour, being steered from below, E 14 was so badly damaged that Lt-Cmdr White turned towards the shore in order to give the crew a chance of being saved. 

“He remained on deck the whole time himself until he was killed by a shell.”

His body was not recovered and he is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. 

In June 2012 the wreck if E14 was found with a shell hole through the coral-encrusted bow. 

E14 had been commissioned into Royal Navy service on November 18 in 1914 and had cost £105,700 to build. 

It displaced 807 tons when submerged and was 181ft in length. 

The boat had five torpedo tubes and a deck gun able to fire 12lb shells.