Dinner at Etchinghill Golf Club. Commander Colin Tozer speaking

A choppy passage in the Royal Navy - how I accidentally sank an enemy submarine

Commander Colin Tozer RN (rtd)

Colin Tozer graduated from The Britannia Royal Navy College, Dartmouth in 1975 as a sub lieutenant in the executive branch. After 12 months sea training, he joined HMS JUNO as communications officer and achieved his bridge watch-keeping and ocean navigation qualifications.

Having spent more than three years travelling the world, he spent the next 15 months on fishery protection duties in UK waters as the navigating officer in HMS Anglesey. His next ship was HMS Brilliant, a brand new ASW frigate, in which he went to South Georgia and the Falklands War in 1982.

He then navigated a frigate, HMS Lowestoft, for 12 months before his successful graduation from the RN School of Maritime Operations as a principal warfare officer. Subsequent appointments took Colin to Australia and Canada together with further sea appointments as a warfare officer and then as the executive officer (second in command) of HMS Cardiff. After a period in command, he came ashore, where he spent another ten years or so as a staff officer working for Flag Officer Surface Flotilla and the Second Sea Lord. 

He was promoted to commander in 2001 and retired in 2004. He will relate his experiences in submarines and ships leading up to the largely untold capture of South Georgia in the South Atlantic and including the previously untold true story of how the Argentinian submarine Santa Fe was sunk.