Arthur Henry Callaway, commander of the anti-submarine trawler Lady Shirley
Photo courtesy Australian War Memorial, accession number P07618.022
The Lady Shirley was an ugly little trawler, blunt in the bow, low in the water and shaped like a tub, but when it came to fighting, the squat little ship was able to take on one of the best weapons of seagoing warfare the Germans were able to throw against her.
When the crew of the Lady Shirley came to blows with a finely tuned, heavily armed German U-boat the results should have been obvious to everyone: the little trawler, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Arthur Callaway, should have gone to the bottom of the Atlantic taking all those on board with her. However, nothing could have been farther from the truth. The U-boat crew, poorly trained, over confident and believing that the Lady Shirley would be an easy victim, were completely unprepared for what came next. Within nineteen minutes all the German crew would either be captured or dead, the submarine would be on the bottom of the ocean taking its captain with it, and the British Secret Services would be presented with an astonishing intelligence coup that could potentially save hundreds or even thousands of lives.
Because of its amazing success the Lady Shirley was to become the object of great celebration throughout the British Isles and dominions but also, a few months later, one of astonishing mystery. Even today the questions surrounding the disappearance of the Lady Shirley and its entire heroic crew have never been satisfactorily answered. The Lady Shirley was to become one of the greatest enigmas of the Second World War.