OVER the centuries many forms of travel have graced the waters of the River Severn at Worcester from a couple of Ancient Britons on a log to hairy Norsemen looking to rape and pillage and in the 20th century large fuel tankers arriving at the storage depot at Diglis.

Not to mention the pleasure steamers with their legendary parties.

But there haven’t been many submarines. In fact, chances are, only one. The river’s too shallow.

Right at the start of this I will caution by pointing out that any time a layman writes about trains, boats, planes or buses, invariably an enthusiast of the subject will emerge to point out a fine detail is wrong.

Either it’s an XL42 Class instead of an XL41 or it’s a triple bogie rather than a double, etc, etc, etc.

So this is the best I can do drawn from accounts at the time, which was back on October 23, 1957.

On that day naval history was made in Worcester when for the first time (and the last) a midget submarine berthed at North Quay.

Named HMS Shrimp, it was just three years old but had already taken part in large-scale NATO exercises.

Shrimp was one of the Royal Navy’s four Stickleback Class midget subs – along with sisters Stickleback, Sprat and Minnow – which were all updates on a previous range.

They were designed to allow British defences to practice defending against midget submarines, since it was believed the Soviet Union had or could develop similar craft.

The Navy had plans to use them to carry a two-ton nuclear mine codenamed Cudgel into Soviet harbours.

It was a development of similar devices that had been used in the Second World War on various missions, including the crippling of the German battleship Tirpitz.

However, the project was unsuccessful as there were problems finding and paying for the necessary nuclear material.

HMS Shrimp was true to its name, being only 54ft long with a beam of 6ft 3ins.

Propelled by diesel and electric motors, it had, almost unbelievably, a crew of five and was launched on December 30 1954 at the Barrow-in-Furness yard of Vickers-Armstrong.

But its life was equally short and, as military thinking changed, it was scrapped in 1965.

In 1957 Shrimp, minus its nuclear armament because you could never be sure with those steamer parties, undertook an operational tour of the Severn and from Worcester cruised down to Upton-upon-Severn where it berthed and was visited by local schoolchildren.

Docking at North Quay, Worcester, it proved a great attraction, particularly for the local Sea Cadets and Naval Reserve units who were allowed on board. Not many at a time.

The Sea Cadet corps nationally was officially founded in 1899 and the Worcester unit was set up in 1937 with its first HQ being, rather bizarrely, in Worcester Cathedral’s Edgar Tower.

It has had a few homes around the city since then but is now long established as Worcester Sea Cadets, together with the Royal Marines Cadets, in Great Western Avenue, off Midland Road. Which is well out of reach of any midget subs.