Submariner's jumper: Lieutenant Edward Arthur Woodward, HMS Unbeaten

White 12 ply greasy wool submariner's jumper with polo neck. The cuffs, basque and neck are knitted in rib; the body of the jumper in stocking stitch. There are numerous oil stains and roughly darned repairs. All the edges have been machined in white running stitch at a later date to stablise the ribbing.

Submariner’s jumper worn by Lieutenant Edward Arthur 'Teddy' Woodward while in command of the British submarine HMS Unbeaten.

Born 18 December 1910 at Buenos Aires, Brazil, Woodward was educated in Dorset, England and at age 13 joined the Royal Navy as a cadet midshipman and completed his education at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth (HMS Britannia). After serving as midshipman aboard HMS Benbow and HMS Warspite as part of the Atlantic Fleet in 1928 and 1929, Woodward undertook two years of course at Greenwich in 1931-32, gaining the rank of lieutenant and specialising as a submariner. From 1933 he served with Royal Navy's submarine flotilla in the Mediterranean and China.

During the Second world War, on 14 September 1940 Lieutenant Woodward was placed in command of the newly commissioned submarine HMS Unbeaten, a U class submarine built by Vickers Armstrong at their shipyards at Barrow-in-Furness in 1939-1940. Unbeaten joined Britain's 10th Submarine Flotilla, based in Malta, from where patrols were launched. Between her first Mediterranean patrol on 26 April 1941, until 1 April 1942, (when the submarine’s torpedo tubes were damaged by enemy bombing at Malta and was forced to return to England for repairs), HMS Unbeaten was responsible for the torpedoing and sinking of the Italian sailing vessel V51/Alfa (30 August 1940); the German U-Boat U-374 (12 January 1942); the Vichy French merchantman PLM20 (1 March 1942); and the Italian submarine Guglielmotti (17 March 1942). For completing his first 12 patrols, Woodward was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and promoted to lieutenant commander; he was awarded a bar to his DSO for sinking the U-374. By the time of his return to England, Woodward had commanded 18 Mediterranean patrols.

On 16 October 1942 Woodward was placed in command of HMS Tactician, but just two months later, was transferred to HMS Dolphin, the submarine depot and training centre where, until the end of the war, he took charge of the 'Perisher' submarine commanding officers qualifying courses which were conducted at Port Bannatyne on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. On 30 June 1944 he was promoted to commander. Although Woodward had been awarded a second bar to his DSO in May 1943 for sinking a total of 11,000 tons of shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean, this sudden change in command to a training school was, in some circles, seen as a punishment for his continued vocal criticism of RAF Coastal Command; his old command, HMS Unbeaten, had been accidentally sunk with the loss of all hands by a Wellington bomber on 12 November 1942 in the Bay of Biscay while under the command of Lieutenant D E O Watson.

After his retirement from the navy on 2 April 1946, Edward Woodward emigrated to Adelaide, Australia, where he died in May 1997.