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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday 12 November 2025:

Above we see the Dutch Admiralen-class torpedobootjager (destroyer) Hr. Ms. Banckert (BK) as she appeared sometime between 1931 and 1942. She was commissioned 90 years ago this week and is sadly almost forgotten, although she often came through in the clutch when the chips were down.

The Yarrow Admiralen 8-pack

In November 1923, the British Admiralty issued a request to the major shipyards specializing in escorts for designs of the first destroyers to be built for the Royal Navy since the end of the Great War. The tender was awarded jointly the next year for two prototype ships, one from Thornycroft to become the future HMS Amazon, and the second from competitor Yarrow for what would become the future HMS Ambuscade (D38). Ambuscade, a two-funneled greyhound of some 322 feet overall length, had a narrow 31-foot beam and, with a 1,600-ton displacement, could float in just nine feet of water.

Armed with four BL 4.7″/45 Mk I guns in single mounts with an armored shield, Ambuscade also carried six 21-inch torpedo tubes in two triple launcher turnstiles. Powered by a pair of geared turbines on triple Yarrow  (who else?) 4-drum boilers, she had 35,000shp on tap and could make 37 knots.

While Ambuscade would serve through WWII and lead to the follow-on 20-ship A- and B-class destroyers for the Royal Navy, which were basically the same ship but a little slower and with a heavier armament, the design proved a hit for Yarrow when it came to export.

The Portuguese ordered five Douro-class destroyers to the Ambuscade design (two of which were resold to Colombia while still on the builder’s ways), and the Dutch would order another eight, each class with minor differences.

The eight Dutch ships would replace, on a one-for-one basis, the older Roofdier-class torpedobootjager, which were built on the eve of the Great War. Small, at just 500 tons/231-feet oal, the Roofdiers were cramped and poorly armed with just two 18-inch torpedo tubes and four low-angle 3″/52 guns. The new destroyers would be bound for the Dutch East Indies to bolster the defense of that far-off yet resource-rich colony.

Dubbed the Admiralen-class (Admiralenklasse) because they were all named after famous Dutch admirals, these Ambuscade clones had a similar layout to their British older sister but went a little lighter (1,337 tons) on the same-sized hull. A little slower due to a 31,000shp engineering plant, they could “only” make 34 knots, and they had about the same range (3,300nm @15 knots), but added a couple of tricks.

Rather than the comparatively slower British BL 4.7s, the Dutch went with a four-pack of Swedish Bofors-made 4.7″/50 guns with only the most forward and most aft guns protected by shields.

For AAA (luchtdoelgeschut) use, the Admiralen carried one or two 3-inch guns (Bofors Mark 6 in early ships, a single HIH Siderius Mark 8 in latter ships) on a bandstand between the stacks and four .50 caliber Browning water-cooled mounts on deck. The second flight of four ships substituted four Vickers QF 2-pounder (40mm) guns instead of the second 3-incher.

Six torpedo tubes for Whitehead Type II/53 torpedoes, and mine handling gear (mechanical mine sweeping paravanes in the first four, mine laying tracks for 24 Vickers mines in the last four– the latter of which blocked the firing arc of the stern most 4.7-inch mount) rounded out the armament. Weight and space were reserved for depth charge racks and four throwers (with 12 “ash cans”,) although listening gear was only provided to two of the ships (Hr.Ms. Van Ghent and Witte de With) in 1941.

Despite their small size, the class was designed to carry and use a single embarked Fokker C.VII-W floatplane, although without a catapult. This means the Fokker had to be winched over the side for both takeoff and recovery, a time-consuming process.

Plane-carrying, torpedo-slinging, fast destroyers that doubled as minesweepers/layers. Not a bad concept.

Although to a British design and with a British powerplant and much equipment, all eight Admiralen were constructed in Holland, with the first flight of four (De Ruyter/Van Ghent, Evertsen, Kortenaer, and Piet Hein) all laid down in August 1925 from Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde (now Damen) and Burgerhout. The second flight of four (Van Galen, Witte de With, Banckert, and Van Nes) was ordered in 1927-28 from the same two yards as well as Wilton-Fijenoord.

All eight were delivered and in service by 1931.

Meet Banckert 

Our subject carries the name of legendary 17th-century Dutch Luitenant-Admiraal Adriaan van Trappen Banckert, who played key roles during the victories of The Four Days’ Battle (Schoonebeld) in 1666, which pitted 84 Dutch ships vs 79 English, and the Two Days’ Battle (Kijkduin) in 1673, which saw 97 Dutch ships best a 130-strong Anglo-French force.

She was laid down on 15 August 1928 at Burgerhout’s Machinefabriek en Scheepswerf NV near Rotterdam.

Launched 14 November 1929, she commissioned 11 November 1930.

As Banckert and Van Nes, also constructed side-by-side at Burgerhout, were the last flight, they had upgraded guns, including Mark 5 4.7″/50s rather than the Mark 4s in their sisters, in addition to the other above-mentioned changes.

Headed to the Far East by way of the Caribbean

All eight Admiralens spent the bulk of their career in the Far East, returning to Europe for refits and making the occasional call on Dutch colonies in the West Indies (e.g, Curacao) and South America (Guiana/Suriname) along the way back and forth to serve as a station ship when needed before the purpose-designed gunboat Hr.Ms. Johan Maurits van Nassau became the permanent station ship in the Dutch West Indies in 1933.

With that being said, Banckert left Nieuwediep on 12 January 1931, bound for Curacao, with stops at Lisbon, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Port of Spain before arriving at Willemstad on 7 February.

She remained the station ship in the Dutch West Indies until November, when she sailed back to Nieuwediep. She remained in Dutch waters for the next 13 months, except for a summer training cruise to Scotland and a fortnight port call at Invergordon in July 1933.

On 14 December 1933, Banckert and her sister Van Nes waved goodbye to the crowds at Nieuwediep to begin their extended deployment to the Dutch East Indies, a trip of 9,900 miles.

Along the way, they made port calls at Tunis, Alexandria, Port Said, Perim (Yemen), and Colombo before arriving at Sabang on Sumatra on 25 January 1934, wrapping up the cruise in 42 days.

Once in Indonesia, Banckert and most of her sisters formed a squadron around the light cruisers Hr.Ms Java and her twin Sumatra (the latter relieved after 1937 by the shiny new 7,900-ton Hr.Ms De Ruyter) then spent the next six years in a series of training maneuvers, naval parades, state visits, and sovereignty patrols.

On 20 October 1936, Banckert became a lifeguard, rushing to the aid of the sinking Dutch KPM coastal liner Van der Wijck, which had capsized in calm weather while underway in the Java Sea. The destroyer joined with seven MLD Dornier Wal flying boats and three local vessels in helping to save 210 of the 268 people aboard.

The incident is infamous in the region, with Van der Wijck having something of a “Titanic of Indonesia” air about her, likely due to an enduringly popular Indonesian-language novel, “Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck” (The Sinking of van der Wijck), written by Hamka in 1939, which was later turned into a movie, which was the highest-grossing Indonesian film of 2013.

War!

When the Germans marched into Poland in September 1939, the Netherlands remained a cautious, Allied-leaning neutral until invaded nine months later as the Wehrmacht swept through the Lowlands on the way to France. It was there that the Admiralen-class Hr.Ms. Van Galen, the only destroyer in Dutch European waters at the time, there for a refit, suffered a series of 30 air attacks while underway in the Nieuwe Waterweg and sank near Merwehaven on 10 May 1940.

On the other side of the globe in the Dutch East Indies, the remaining seven Admiralen-class sisters went on the warpath with the destroyers, in conjunction with local colonial troops, seizing 18 of 19 German merchant ships in Dutch territorial waters, long a haven in the Pacific from British and French patrols.

This came about due to a bit of cloak and dagger in which the PTT (Post, Telegraaf, en Telefoondienst) office in Soerabaja (Surabaya) withheld a coded German telegram, dated 9 May, directed to the respective captains of the interned German ships, ordering them to take flight on the eve of the invasion of the Netherlands. Passing it on to local intelligence instead, Dutch forces were able to swiftly capture 18 steamers with only the wily captain of the HAPAG freighter SS Sophie Rickmers (7,033 GRT) managing to scuttle his ship in harbor.

Although declared a total loss at the time, Rickmers was raised, repaired, and put into Dutch service with KPM as SS Toendjoek. Rickmers/Toendjoek was later scuttled off the port of Tandjung Priok as a blockship during the Dutch evacuation of Java in March 1942 and raised a second time, then put under a meatball flag sailing for the Japanese as the Iino lines freighter Tango Maru. Tragically, the former German/Dutch freighter, packed with a mix of 3,500 local Javanese Romusha laborers and Allied (mostly Dutch Colonial) POWs, was torpedoed and sunk by USS Rasher (SS-269) 25 miles off Java on 25 February 1944, taking most of them to the bottom with her for her third and final time.

At the end of the day on 10 May 1940, the Dutch in the East Indies bagged 18 German merchant ships (19 once Rickmer was raised), and threw their crews and 2,400 German nationals over the age of 16 taken into custody across the islands into an internment camp where, besides their regular rations, they were issued “ten cigarettes a day and pocket money for refreshments.” Despite this easy treatment by the Dutch in Java, in July 1940, 231 members of the KNIL– the Dutch East Indies colonial army– who were on leave in the German-occupied Netherlands, were arrested by the Gestapo and thrown into concentration camps for the duration.

After that, the mobilized Dutch naval forces in the East Indies kept an eye peeled for German surface raiders and U-boats while on loose convoy duty and prepped to fight…

A whole new war

On 30 September 1940, Luitenant ter zee der 1e klasse (LTZ I) Lambert Johan Goslings, RNN, assumed command of Banckert, just days after Japanese troops entered French Indochina. The Sumatra-born Goslings was a career officer with 13 years of service behind him and had previously served on the Admiralen class destroyers Evertsen and Kortenaer, so he knew his trade.

Soon, with tensions building with the German-aligned Empire of Japan and the Western Allies, Banckert and the rest of the Dutch fleet in the Pacific began quietly exercising with the British forces in nearly Malaya and Australians to the south.

With a state of war existing between the Netherlands and Japan as of the morning of 8 December 1941, and with news of inbound Japanese troopship convoys sighted near Indochina, the Dutch fleet spent the next several weeks aggressively patrolling and…waiting.

In the meantime, Banckert and her sisters pitched in escorting British convoys from Africa and India, the final leg to Singapore, including Convoy BM 9A (1-2 January), Convoy BM 9B (4-6 January), Convoy DM 1 (11-13 January), and Convoy BM 10 (22-26 January).

By 1 February, Dutch RADM Karel Doorman’s joint ABDA Striking Force consisted of four cruisers, the De Ruyter (his flag), USS Houston, USS Marblehead, and Hr.Ms.Tromp, along with seven tin cans: U.S. Destroyer Division 58 led by CDR Binford on USS Stewart, with USS Edwards, USS Barker, and USS Bulmer; and a Dutch destroyer division commanded by LCDR Krips on Van Ghent, with the Piet Hein and Banckert.

While going after reported Japanese convoys in the Makassar Strait, Doorman’s cruiser-destroyer force was mauled by enemy land-based twin-engine bombers on 4 February, sending it back to port to lick its wounds. Although Banckert was so far unscathed, that would not continue.

On Valentine’s Day, Doorman’s Striking Force, augmented by two Australian cruisers, the Dutch cruiser Java, and three extra Dutch/U.S. destroyers, headed out to stop the Japanese Palembang invasion convoy. It was on this run that Van Ghent grounded on the Bamidjo reef between Banka and Billiton island while zipping through the Stolze Strait in the dark predawn of 15 February. Ordered to put down the wounded greyhound, Banckert closed with her stranded sister and took off her crew and sensitive materials, then pumped five broadsides into her bow, then retired to Surabaya with the extra crew.

Banckert was at Surabaya on 24 February when the port was attacked by Japanese bombers, with near misses cracking the destroyer’s hull in several places– knocking her out on the eve of the Battle of the Java Sea and the follow-on clash at  Sunda Strait in which Doorman was killed and most of his ships were lost.

Put in the port’s 3,500-ton dry dock for emergency repairs, Banckert was again the subject of a very near miss on 28 February that damaged her stern. Meanwhile, the Japanese had landed on Java and were closing in on Surabaya.

With the call made to fire the port and evacuate what could be moved, the dock containing the evacuated Banckert was torpedoed by Hr.Ms. K XVII before the submarine submerged and made for Freemantle with the port’s commanding admiral aboard. Behind were left her damaged sister, Witte de With, similarly abandoned and scuttled, along with a mix of over 120 vessels either too old, small, or broken to make it to Australia.

The crews of Banckert and Witte de With, their job as wreckers done, marched off to join Dutch Lt. Gen. Hein Ter Poorten’s land forces and continued to fight the Japanese until 8 March, when resistance collapsed. The Dutch radio station at Ciumbuluit signed off with “Wij sluiten nu. Vaarwel tot betere tijden. Leve de Koningin!” (We are closing now. Farewell till better times. Long live the Queen!)

With the port still ablaze, no less than 66,219 Dutch troops and sailors laid down their arms and marched off to begin more than four years of hard captivity.

All six of Banckert’s sisters in the Pacific– her entire class– were similarly lost in the first four months of the war against Japan.

Evertsen: Caught by the Japanese destroyers Murakumo and Shirakumo during her last sortie on the night of 27/28 February 1942 while trying to escape to falling Java for Colombo via the Sunda Strait, she was beached ablaze on the Seboekoe Besar reef. Nine men were killed, and others were captured and imprisoned for the duration of the war.

Piet Hein: Sunk in the February 19/20 night action while trying to intercept the Japanese invasion forces off Bali, she went down with the loss of 64 crew.

Van Ghent: As discussed above, she was accidentally reefed while on a sortie against the Japanese and abandoned.

Kortenaer: Took a torpedo from the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro during the Battle of the Java Sea, which broke her back and sent her to the bottom with a third of her crew.

Witte de With: Damaged at Java Sea and by a Japanese bomb to the fo’c’scle on 1 March, she was scuttled the next day.

Van Nes: Attacked and sunk by Japanese aircraft from the Japanese carrier Ryujo on 17 February 1942, with the loss of 68 crew.

Under the Rising Sun

The water-logged Banckert was raised by the escort-poor Japanese in 1944, partially repaired, and put in service as the patrol craft PB-106.

She was one of at least four former Dutch vessels, but the only member of her class placed in IJN service as patrol boats.

On 23 October 1945, VADM Shibata Yaichiro, CINC, Second Southern Expeditionary Fleet, surrendered Java to Free Dutch Forces, and Banckert/PB-106 was returned to the Dutch, who eventually stripped the hulk and decommissioned the wreck from the Koninklijke Marine on 5 March 1947.

The almost unrecognizable ex-Banckert was sent to the bottom of the Madura Strait in September 1949, the last member of her class to take the plunge.

Ironically, she was sunk by the new (to the Dutch) British S-class destroyers Evertsen and Kortenaer.

Epilogue

As for Banckert’s wartime skipper, LTZ I Goslings, he managed to escape Japanese custody and by September 1943, wearing a recently-awarded Bronzen Kruis, was once again on the bridge of a Dutch escort, commanding the Flower-class corvette Hr. Ms. Friso (K 00) on convoy duty in the Atlantic.

By late 1945, he was XO of the 14,000-ton escort carrier Hr. Ms. Karel Doorman (QH 1) (formerly the HMS Nairana D05) which operated with Hawker Sea Fury fighters against communist insurgents in the Dutch East Indies.

In 1954-55, Kapitein-ter-zee Lambert Johan Goslings was skipper of the Dutch flagship, the Colossus-class light fleet carrier Hr. Ms. Karel Doorman (R81), ex-HMS Venerable, future ARA Veinticinco de Mayo.

The next year, RADM Gosling led the Dutch Navy’s 1,500-man Smaldeel 5 (Squadron 5), with his flag on the cruiser HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën, accompanied by the destroyers Friesland and Zeeland, on a tour of Europe, including a port call at Leningrad (St. Petersburg), laying a wreath at the city’s WWII memorial at Kronstadt. It was reportedly the first time Russian naval officers were welcomed aboard a Dutch warship since 1914.

The Dutch remembered Banckert in a British-built Q-class destroyer, D801, previously HMS Quilliam, which was acquired in 1945 and scrapped in 1957. Notably, she served in the Dutch East Indies during the war with Indonesian separatists there.

The latest Banckert, (F810), a Kortenaer-class frigate, served with the Dutch fleet from 1980 through 2003 and continues to sail with the Greek Navy as the frigate Aigaion.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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