WWI Royal Navy Trench Art Unofficial Honours Board

We just love this item! It features a WWI Royal Navy submarine travelling on the surface. The detailed artwork is hammered out on a copper plate and with the boat shown in significant detail even down to the two crew members on the conning tower and the White Ensign flying proudly above. The conning tower is marked with the number 26. Prior to Winston Churchill taking an interest all early British submarines carried a number rather than a name. By a process of deduction we have ruled out this being from an A, B, D or E class sub and the closest match we can get is the boat C -26. To the top left of the board is a brass plaque inserted behind the copper. This is headed up in Latin 'DE PROFUNDUS VICTORES'. My Latin at school was never good but our understanding this translates to mean: 'Out Of The Depth Victorious' which seems appropriate here! Below is engraved the theatres of war in which the boat served starting with Straits of Gibraltar in 1914, the Aegean Sea, Dardenelles and Tripoli in 1915 and finally the Adriatic in 1916. If we are correct in stating this relates to C -26 she was part of the Baltic operations in the latter part of the war but was scuttled along with C-27, and C-35 off Helsinki in 1918 to prevent them falling into German hands. The copper artwork is screwed to a hardwood mount of an irregular shape and we speculate this may have been to fit inside the submarine on a wardroom wall. It measures 10" x 9" (25 cm x 23 cm) and is fitted with a brass hanging plate. A scarce and original piece of WWI Royal Navy submarine memorabilia.