(Image: Dulwich College)

Robert Halahan was born on 5 April 1885, the son of the late Colonel (5th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers) and Mrs Samuel Handy Halahan of Sydenham Hill, Surrey. He was the brother of Henry Crosby Halahan who was also a submariner.  He was educated at Dulwich College.

Halahan joined the Royal Navy in 1900.  After promotion to Lieutenant in 1905, he was appointed to the Submarine Depot Ship HMS THAMES ‘for Training’ in 1906.  By 1908 he had again been re-appointed to HMS MERCURY but this time ‘for Command of Submarines’. In 1909 he took command of HMS C18. His next appointment was to the cruiser HMS HYACINTH and in 1911 to the battleship HMS BRITANNIA.  During this time he qualified as a pilot.

He returned to submarines in 1913 to take command of HMS D2 and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander soon after.  In 1914 he was re-appointed in command of HMS D6 then in 1915 to HMS E18 in build at Barrow-in-Furness and nearing completion.  E18 was sent to the Baltic to join the other Submarines of the Baltic Flotilla in early September 1915.

Halahan made an attack on the German destroyer V-100 in the Baltic in May 1916. The attack blew the bows off the destroyer which, however, did not sink and reached harbour safely.  HMS E18 was not so lucky and was ‘lost with all hands’ after striking a mine.

Lieutenant-Commander Halahan and his crew were later singled out for commendation by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who took the highly unusual step of awarding him the Russian Order of St. George posthumously.

Robert was not the Halahan family’s only sacrifice in the war; his elder brother Captain Henry Crosby Halahan DSO RN was killed in action leading the Naval storming party from HMS VINDICTIVE at Zeebrugge on 23 April 1918.

Robert Halahan was the husband of Gwladwys Mabel Davenport (formerly Halahan) of Stubbington, Hampshire and he is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval War Memorial Panel No. 11.