The minister was told about the HMS Royal Oak which was torpedoed by a German U-boat with the loss of 833 lives at Scapa Flow, off the Orkney coast, on 14 October 1939.

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The letters to his mother about life in the Royal Navy came to an abrupt halt with a telegram of his death on the HMS Royal Oak, torpedoed in Scapa Flow by the German submarine U-47 in October 1939.

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He told the 15 justices in the oak-panelled, chandeliered courtroom that the United States has presented a formal apology to the German government.

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