HMS Starfish (19S) was a Group one British S class

British S class submarine (1931)

The S-class submarines of the Royal Navy were originally designed and built during the modernisation of the submarine force in the early 1930s to meet the need for smaller boats to patrol the restricted waters of the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea replacing the British H class submarines...

 submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

 that was depth charged and sunk by a German minesweeper M7 at Heligoland Bight

Heligoland Bight

The Heligoland Bight, also known as Helgoland Bight, is a bay which forms the southern part of the German Bight, itself a bay of the North Sea, located at the mouth of the Elbe river...

 on 9 January 1940 during the Second World War. Her crew were captured.

HMS Starfish sailed from Blyth for patrol on 5 January 1940. On 9 January, she sighted a German destroyer and attacked it. A communication problem caused the first attack to fail and as the submarine returned to periscope depth to carry out another attack she was attacked by depth charges. Further depth charge attacks forced Starfish to settle on the bottom and wait for the enemy to move on. At 18:15 Starfish returned to the surface, all confidential documents were destroyed and the submarine scuttled. The ship’s company were picked up by the waiting ships and taken as prisoners of war.