HMS Perseus, a Royal Navy submarine, left Malta for Alexandria, Egypt on October 26, 1941. On board was 31-year-old John Capes, a stoker fleeing the besieged island. During the night of December 6, the submarine hit an Italian mine off the coast of the Greek island of Kefalonia, instantly killing most of its passengers. Luckily, Capes was drinking rum and reading letters in a converted torpedo rack at the time, which didn’t start flooding until Perseus smashed into the ocean floor. When he realized what was happening, he went searching for survivors and found three other stokers, all of whom were badly injured. Surrounded by rising water and bodies, they headed to the escape hatch, and after finishing off the rum and donning escape apparati, they made their perilous escape into the sea.
When Capes surfaced, he saw that the three other submariners hadn’t made it. Despite the pain in his lungs from the escape, he swam toward the Greek island of Cephalonia. After dragging himself ashore, he fell unconscious and was found by two fishermen. For the next 18 months, he was given shelter and cared for by the locals, who hid him from the occupying Axis forces. He was then smuggled by boat to the then-neutral Turkey and eventually to Alexandria. Unsurprisingly, not many believed his incredible tale, especially since he wasn’t on the crew list for the journey. His story wasn’t proven true until the wreck of the Perseus was found in 1997, 15 years after his death.
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DEEP WEB: facts, conspiracies, solved, unsolved cases, murders and mysteries
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