HMS Torbay (N79) was a T-class submarine of the Royal Navy. She was laid down at Chatham Dockyard and launched on 9 April 1940.

Torbay had an active and successful career, serving mainly in the Mediterranean, although she also served in the Pacific Far East at the end of the war.

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. Cdr.) Anthony Miers, the Victoria Cross.

Torbay was also involved in two incidents alleged to be war crimes.

Service history

Torbay was commissioned on 14 January 1941, under the command of Lt. Cdr. Anthony Miers.

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.

Five ships of the British Royal Navy have been named HMS Torbay, after Torbay on the southwest English coast.

HMS Torbay is a Trafalgar-class nuclear submarine of the Royal Navy and the fourth vessel of her class. Torbay is the fifth vessel and the second submarine of the Royal Navy to be named after Torbay in Devon, England. The first vessel was the 80-gun second rate HMS Torbay launched in 1693.

Torbay was the first vessel to be fitted with the new command system SMCS-NG and therefore the first British warship to be controlled using the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Torbay was scheduled to be decommissioned in 2015 and will be replaced by one of the new Astute class submarines.As of November 2013 she is still undergoing extended maintenance and upgrades, which were originally scheduled to complete in Summer 2013. The work may allow a life extension beyond the current decommissioning date.

Operational history

Torbay completed a refuel and modernisation process in February 2001.

In early 2006, Torbay was the participant in an experiment in the use of colour schemes to reduce the visibility of submarines from the air. The standard black paint of Royal Navy submarines was replaced by a carefully selected shade of blue. This was the result of research that found that black was the worst possible colour for a submarine attempting to avoid detection from the air. This change is in part the result of the changing nature of Royal Navy commitments since the end of the Cold War, with Navy operations moving from the murky waters of the North Atlantic to the clearer waters of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

HMS Neptune was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was built under the 1677 "Thirty Great Ships" Programme and launched in 1683 at Deptford Dockyard. She was first commissioned in 1690 under Captain Thomas Gardiner, as the flagship of Vice-Admiral George Rooke. In that capacity she took part in the Battle of Barfleur in May 1692.

She underwent her first rebuild at William Johnson's yard at Blackwall Yard, from where she was relaunched on 6 May 1710 as a 90-gun second-rate built to the 1706 Establishment. She was recommissioned on 3 February 1711 under Capt. Francis Wyvell, but paid off into reserve in July of that year and saw no service.

On 18 August 1724 Neptune was ordered to be taken to pieces and rebuilt as a 90-gun second-rate to the 1719 Establishment at Woolwich Dockyard, from where she was relaunched on 15 October 1730. She was cut down to a 74-gun third rate at Chatham Dockyard from 1747 to April 1749, and was renamed HMS Torbay on 23 August 1750,the previous ship bearing this name having been broken up in 1749.

Torbay /tɔːrˈbeɪ/ is a borough in Devon, England, administered by the unitary authority of Torbay Council. It consists of 62.87 square kilometres (24.27 sq mi) of land, spanning the towns of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham, located around an east-facing natural harbour (Tor Bay) on the English Channel. Torbay is roughly equidistant from the cities of Exeter and Plymouth. A popular tourist destination with a tight conurbation of resort towns, Torbay's sandy beaches, mild climate and recreational and leisure attractions have given rise to the nickname of the English Riviera.

History

That the Torbay area has been inhabited since Paleolithic times is shown by human bones and tools found in Kents Cavern in Torquay. A maxilla fragment known as Kents Cavern 4 may be the oldest example of a modern human in Europe, dating back to 37,000–40,000 years ago.Roman soldiers are known to have visited Torquay during the period when Britain was a part of the Roman Empire, leaving offerings at a curious rock formation in Kent's Cavern, known as "The Face".

Torbay is an English borough and bay. Torbay can also mean:

Coordinates: 50°27′36″N 3°32′17″W / 50.460°N 3.538°W / 50.460; -3.538

Torbay is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Kevin Foster, a Conservative.

Boundaries

The constituency covers the majority of the Torbay unitary authority in Devon, including the seaside resorts of Torquay and most of Paignton.

Parliament accepted the Boundary Commission's Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies which slightly altered this constituency for the 2010 general election since which it has electoral wards:

The remainder of the borough is covered by the Totnes constituency.

History

After being held for several Parliaments (taking together various predecessor areas) by Conservatives, from 1997 the seat was held by Liberal Democrats until 2015 when a Conservative re-took it. The majority in 1997 was the most marginal of that election, and the majority of 2,029 in 2005 was the lowest to date.