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Remembering the WV

Posted on March 16, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Some 65 years ago this week, the main mast of the famed Pearl Harbor phoenix battlewagon, USS West Virginia (Battleship No. 48), arrived at WVU’s campus in Morgantown on 17 March 1961, thanks to fundraising efforts by the university’s students—many of whom grew up during the war.

Commissioned on 1 December 1923, the 16-inch gunned Colorado-classed West Virginia, although sunk at Pearl Harbor and missing much of the war during her raising and reconstruction, nevertheless earned five battle stars in 223 days of Pacific theatre combat, well exhibiting the fighting spirit of the ship and her crew.

Original layout of USS West Virginia in the Panama Canal. Late 1920s

USS West Virginia (BB-48). Off the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Washington, 2 July 1944, following reconstruction. 19-N-68376

She fought in the great Surigao Strait battleship night clash, fired nearly 2,865 16-inch shells and 23,880 5-inch shells in naval gunfire support during the Leyte, Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa campaigns; and fired another 33,000 AAA rounds — 40mm (11,041) and 20mm (21,759) — at enemy aircraft, downing eight and assisting with another 12 shootdowns. A kamikaze hit her in April 1945, but she was fully operational an hour later. Following her service, she returned 7,000 veterans home from the Far East on a Magic Carpet ride, steaming 71,600 nm during her WWII 1943-45 career.

Decommissioned on 9 January 1947 and placed in the Pacific Reserve Fleet after a history-spanning 23-years, she never received the recall to active duty, remaining in mothballs until she was struck from the Navy Register on 1 March 1959. On 24 August 1959, she was sold for scrapping to the Union Minerals & Alloys Corp. of New York City, but many of her relics were removed and preserved.

Today, her mast, dedicated in 1963, remains on display in front of WVU’s Oglebay Hall on the Downtown Campus, while the university maintains an exhibit featuring smaller items and a scale model. WVU also maintains an extensive photograph collection of the ship.

One of her anti-aircraft guns remains on display in City Park in Parkersburg, WV; her wheel and binnacle are on display at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, and her bell is on display at the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston.

Warship Wednesday, 11 March 2026: Mighty Morrill

Posted on March 11, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday 11 March 2026: Mighty Morrill

Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-9007

Above we see, roughly some 125 years ago, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Morrill, forward, just off the sleek yacht Pathfinder, “standing guard at the first turn,” during the Canada’s Cup yacht race on Lake Ontario in 1901, when Pathfinder hosted the judges. The race was won by the Invader of Mr. Aemilius Jarvis, for the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, besting the yacht Cadillac of the Chicago Club in three of four races.

While dressed in gleaming white and buff, Morrill was a fighter when needed and had already seen service in one war with the “Mosquito Fleet” and had another on the schedule.

Meet Morrill

Our subject is the only U.S. warship named for President Ulysses S. Grant’s circa 1876-77 Treasury Secretary, Lot Myrick Morrill, a former Maine governor and longtime U.S. Senator who passed in 1883. As such, the vessel continued the cutter service’s common naming convention, which repeatedly used the names of past Treasury Secretaries, dating back to Alexander Hamilton.

Part of a trend in the 1880s-90s to build new cutters that could double as gunboats and dispatch boats for the Navy in time of war, USRC Morrill was steel-hulled and had a steam plant capable of pushing her at 13 knots on a compound steam plant (engine cylinders measuring 24 and 38 inches, with a 30-inch stroke). At the same time, her auxiliary schooner rig could be used to extend cruising range.

Some 145 feet overall with a 24-foot beam, Morrill displaced 288 tons and had a draft of just over 12 feet on a standard load. She was a forerunner of the six slightly larger 205-foot “Propeller-class” plow-bowed cruising cutters built 1896-98.

USRC Morrill, circa 1898-1917, while stationed on the Great Lakes, via the Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

USCG Morrill, circa 1916-1917 (note her “Coast Guard” life rings), while stationed on the Great Lakes, via the Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

USRC Morrill, circa 1898-1917, while stationed on the Great Lakes, via the Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

Morrill’s peacetime armament was a single light 6-pounder 57mm Hotchkiss QF gun forward, which could be quickly doubled and augmented with a 3-inch mount in time of war, with weight and space reserved for the extra ordnance. Cutters of the era typically shipped with 55 service rounds for their main gun and 110 blank charges for drill, salutes, or “shots across the bow.”

2nd LT Godfrey L. Carden instructing a 6-pounder gun crew aboard the Revenue Cutter Morill in South Carolina waters, circa 1892. Note the rarely-seen USRSC officer’s sword. Carden would later become the Captain of the Port for New York City in the Great War. USCGH Photo 210210-G-G0000-1002

A significant small arms locker of rifles and revolvers could arm half of her 40-man crew for duty ashore or in seizing vessels, be they bandits and smugglers in peacetime or enemy shipping in war. The service of the era was often called upon to restore law and order ashore, as exemplified in a famous incident where a squad from the revenue cutter McLane landed in Cedar Key, Florida, in 1890 to reclaim the town from its pistol-toting mayor and his gang of ruffians!

Morrill’s berth deck enlisted accommodations were considered spacious for the period and, if needed, would “readily admit of 70 men.”

Her magazine included provision for several large electrically detonated “wrecking mines” packed with as much as 238 pounds of guncotton, used in destroying derelicts– or in reducing hazardous icebergs and blasting paths in the ice sheet both on the Great Lakes and North Atlantic.

Back in the days of wooden-hulled fishing vessels and cargo schooners (sometimes loaded with buoyant cargo such as timber), abandoned vessels could often remain afloat for weeks and remain an enduring hazard to navigation, requiring the dangerous task of sending a wrecking crew in a small boat to rig the gun cotton mines to a waterlogged, unstable hulk.

Cutter destroying a derelict ‘A subject for Dynamite’ drawn by W. Taber, engraved by H. Davidson.

Derelict located by Revenue Cutter Seneca had drifted 285 miles, circa 1900. NARA 56-AR-006

Revenue Cutter McCulloch, attaching mines to destroy a derelict, circa 1900. National Archives Identifier 158884024. NARA Local Identifier 56-AR-63

Revenue Cutter Miami, Preparing to place mines to destroy derelict, circa 1900

Revenue Cutter Onondaga, Loading mines for destroyed sunken wreck, circa 1900. NARA AR-066

Built in 1889 by the Pusey and Jones Corp., Wilmington, Delaware, for a cost of $72,600, USRC Lot M. Morrill (typically only ever seen as “Morrill” in paperwork) was commissioned on 10 October of that year.

In typical Revenue Cutter fashion, her crew crossed decked from an older cutter that was decommissioned in the same stroke– the Civil War-era USRC Naugatuck, which had been based at New Bern, North Carolina since 1865.

Taking up Naugatuck’s old beat– which her experienced crew was familiar with– Morrill was stationed at Wilmington, North Carolina, for her first homeport.

In March 1891, our new cutter performed a then novel inland passage, a military experiment, making it the 155 miles from Charleston, South Carolina, to Fernandina, Florida via the North Edisto, Ashley, Wadmalaw, Stono, and Amelia rivers. She did so with sometimes just a foot of water under her keel and just 30 feet of wetted width between banks as opposed to her 24-foot beam! It was often slow going, especally in tight bends, and in some stretches the charts of the river were quite bad, but via leading with a small boat ahead of her bow dropping lead to verify depth, the task was accomplished in three winding days, only running up on a mudbank once –some six miles up the Wadmalaw– and able to free herself with minor effort. At night, the cutter lay up, ablaze with electric light, proving much the attraction to the locals who came out to watch the curious “bluejackets” in the marsh.

Still, she proved, at least in theory, that a squadron of torpedo boats could run the shallow brackish and fresh waterways from Philadelphia to Fernandina– save for a short break between Moorehead City, North Carolina, and Bulls Bay, South Carolina– keeping well hidden from a European blockading squadron.

With Morrill’s officers dutifully updating their chart and leaving range stakes behind them, it was deemed that, with a little minor dredging here and there, a blue water vessel under 175 feet overall drawing less than 11 feet could make the run from Philly to Florida almost completely inland, enabling dispersed operations of torpedo boat squadrons which could run out from river mouths and shoreline bays to strike enemy battlelines then retreat into their havens.

It should be noted that the USS Cushing (Torpedo Boat #1), which entered service in 1890, was only 140 feet overall with a draft of just less than five feet, and it was only when Farragut (TB-11) joined the fleet in 1899 that American torpedo boats stretched longer than 175 feet.

While the river haven tactic wasn’t actively pursued much further in the U.S., Morrill’s marsh cruise did help lay the way for today’s Intracoastal Waterway, which has rambled 3,000 miles from Boston to Brownsville since 1949 and is key for the movement of commerce in the country today.

Anyway, speaking of Fernandina, Florida, and points south, in early January 1895, Cuban exile leader Jose Marti completed preparations in the area to attempt to ignite a revolt against Spanish colonial despotism in his homeland. He and his followers purchased three small ships, the Amadis, Baracoa, and Lagonda, then outfitted them to carry his freedom fighters and supplies to Cuba. These were foiled by the Treasury Department, which had been ordered to southern Florida to abort such filibuster activities, with Morrill helping with the seizure of Lagonda at Fernandina directly.

From 1895 to 1898, cutters, including our Morrill, Boutwell, Colfax, Forward, McLane, and Winona, patrolled the Straits of Florida to enforce neutrality laws amid attempts to launch illegal expeditions to Cuba. According to Commandant Capt. Charles F. Shoemaker, these efforts required constant vigilance. One tug, Dauntless, was seized by cutters no less than three times. The cutters seized seven ships (besides Dauntless, including all three of Marti’s), detained 12 suspected violators, and disrupted two organized filibustering plots (Marti’s and one by Cuba Gen. Enrique Collazo) before the USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana harbor in February 1898.

Remember the Maine!

With the war drum beating, Morrill and her fellow cutters were soon mobilized a full month before war was declared by Congress on 25 April 1898.

On 24 March, President McKinley ordered Morrill, along with the cutters Gresham (206 foot), Manning (206 foot), Windom (170 foot), Woodbury (138 foot), Hamilton (133 foot), Hudson (94 foot), Guthrie (85 foot) and Calumet (95 foot), “with their officers and crews, be placed under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, and cooperate with the Navy, until further orders…”

Before the conflict was over, 13 revenue cutters were transferred to naval service, staffed by 98 officers and 562 enlisted RCS men. Eight would serve at sea with the North Atlantic Squadron, one (McCulloch) famously fought with Dewey in the Philippines, and four patrolled the U.S. West Coast.

Morrill proceeded to Norfolk Navy Yard and was gently made ready for war, largely via adding at least one extra deck gun, which had varied widely in reports from a second 6-pounder to a gun as large as a 6-incher! Her crew was boosted to nine officers (including a surgeon) and 47 enlisted, allowing for an extra gun crew and ammo handlers.

Morrill’s wardroom during the Spanish-American War:

Captain Horatio Davis Smith, commanding
First Lieutenant John Cassin Cantwell, executive
Second Lieutenant F.A. Levis, navigator
Second Lieutenant C.S. Craig
Third Lieutenant Henry G. Fisher
Chief Engineer E.P. Webber
First Assistant Engineer William Robinson
Second Assistant Engineer F.G. Snyder
Surgeon J. Spencer Hough

USRC Morrill at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 22 April 1898. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-19-21-10

Morrill and her fellow cutters Hudson, Hamilton, and Windom would join the 1st division of the North Atlantic Squadron under the bewhiskered Commodore John Adams Howell (USNA, 1858, best known to history for his early locomotive torpedo). A veteran of the Battle of Mobile Bay, Howell’s division included his flag, the 4,800-ton USS San Francisco I (Cruiser No. 5), the cruiser Montgomery (C-9), four monitors, and 15~ gunboats, with many of the latter being armed yachts quickly converted.

Morrill linked up with the three-masted 204-foot Annapolis-class gunboat USS Vicksburg (PG-11) for the first time on 31 March at Hampton Roads. The two would become partners off Havana, with Vicksburg’s logs mentioning our cutter at least 31 times between then and 14 August. The two worked in conjunction with Vicksburg’s sistership Annapolis, the 275-foot armed yacht USS Mayflower (PY-1), and the plucky 88-foot armed tug USS Tecumseh (YT-24, ex-Edward Luckenbach).

On 24 April 1898, the up-armed Morrill, Hudson, and Hamilton, bound for Howell’s “Mosquito Fleet,” passed through Hampton Roads and, after asking formal permission of the Commodore, proceeded to Key West. From that point, they joined the Navy ships of the Cuban blockading fleet.

After delivering dispatches to the flagship USS New York, Morrill joined the blockade station 5 miles west of the Havana entrance on 5 May and soon captured the Spanish schooner Orienta. One of 25 seized Spanish merchantmen sold as prizes at Key West on 21 June 1898, Orienta must have been either very small or in poor condition, or both, as the vessel, including cargo and equipment, only brought $350 at auction (about $12K when adjusted for inflation) — the lowest of all 25.

It was off Havana that Vicksburg and Morrill became targets for Spanish coastal batteries mounting heavy 10- and 12-inch German pieces for about 20 minutes, with Smith noting in his official report, “came very close” and damaged the bridge with a fragment of shrapnel.

As chronicled in Our War with Spain for Cuba’s Freedom by Trumbull White:

The Spanish set a trap one day during the blockade. The wily Spaniards arranged a trap to send a couple of our ships to the bottom. A small schooner was sent out from Havana harbor to draw some of the Americans into the ambuscade. The ruse worked like a charm. The Vicksburg and the Morrill, in the heat of the chase and in their contempt for Spanish gunnery, walked straight into the trap that had been set for them. Had the Spaniards possessed their souls in patience but five minutes longer, not even their bad gun practice would have saved our ships, and two more of our vessels would lie at the bottom within two lengths of the wreck of the ill-starred Maine.

Friday evening, the Vicksburg and the Morrill, cruising to the west of Morro Castle, were fired on by the big guns of the Cojimar batteries. Two shots were fired at the Vicksburg, and one at the Morrill. Both fell short, and both vessels, without returning the fire, steamed out of range. It would have been folly to have done otherwise. But this time the Spaniards had better luck. The schooner they had sent out before daylight ran off to the eastward, hugging the shore, with the wind on her starboard quarter. About three miles east of the entrance to the harbor, she came over on the port tack. A light haze fringed the horizon, and she was not discovered until three miles offshore, when the Mayflower made her out and signaled the Morrill and Vicksburg.

Captain Smith, of the Morrill, and Commander Lilly, of the Vicksburg, immediately slapped on all steam and started in pursuit. The schooner instantly put about and ran for Morro Castle before the wind. By doing so, she would, according to the well-conceived Spanish plot, lead the two American warships directly under the guns of the Santa Clara batteries. These works are a short mile west of Morro and are a part of the defenses of the harbor. There are two batteries, one at the shore, which has been recently thrown up, of sand and mortar, with wide embrasures for eight-inch guns, and the other on the crest of the rocky eminence which juts out into the water of the gulf at the point.

The upper battery mounts modern 10-inch and 12-inch Krupp guns behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which are twenty feet of earthwork and a belting of railroad iron. This battery is considered the most formidable of Havana’s defenses, except Morro Castle. It is masked and has not been absolutely located by the American warships. It is probably due to the fact that the Spanish did not desire to expose its position that the Vicksburg and Morrill are now afloat.

The Morrill and Vicksburg were about six miles from the schooner when the chase began. They steamed after her at full speed, the Morrill leading until within a mile and a half of the Santa Clara batteries. Commander Smith, of the Vicksburg, was the first to realize the danger into which the reckless pursuit had led them. He concluded it was time to haul off and sent a shot across the bow of the schooner.

The Spanish skipper instantly brought his vessel about, but while she was still rolling in the trough of the sea, with her sails flapping, an 8-inch shrapnel shell came hurtling through the air from the water battery, a mile and a half away. It passed over the Morrill between the pilothouse and the smokestack and exploded less than fifty feet on the port quarter. The small shot rattled against her side. It was a close call.

Two more shots followed in quick succession, both shrapnel. One burst close under the starboard quarter, filling the engine room with the smoke of the explosion of the shell, and the other, like the first, passed over and exploded just beyond.

The Spanish gunners had the range, and their time fuses were accurately set. The crews of both ships were at their guns. Lieutenant Craig, who was in charge of the bow 4-inch rapid-fire gun of the Morrill, asked for and obtained permission to return fire. At the first shot, the Vicksburg, which was in the wake of the Morrill, slightly in-shore, sheared off and passed to windward under the Morrill’s stern.

In the meantime, Captain Smith also put his helm to port, and was none too soon, for as the Morrill stood off, a solid 8-inch shot grazed her starboard quarter and kicked up tons of water as it struck a wave 100 yards beyond. Captain Smith said afterward that this was undoubtedly an 8-inch armor-piercing projectile, and that it would have passed through the Morrill’s boilers had he not changed his course in the nick of time.

All the guns of the water battery were now at work. One of them cut the Jacob’s ladder of the Vicksburg adrift, and another carried away a portion of the rigging. As the Morrill and the Vicksburg steamed away, their aft guns were used, but only a few shots were fired. The Morrill’s 6-inch gun was elevated for 4,000 yards and struck the earthworks repeatedly. The Vicksburg fired but three shots from her 6-pounder.

The Spaniards continued to fire shot and shell for twenty minutes, but the shots were ineffective. Some of them were so wild that they roused the American “Jackies” to jeers. The Spaniards only ceased firing when the Morrill and Vicksburg were completely out of range.

If all the Spanish gunners had been suffering from strabismus, their practice could not have been worse. But the officers of both the Morrill and Vicksburg frankly admit their own recklessness and the narrow escape of their vessels from destruction. They are firmly convinced that the pursuit of the schooner was a neatly planned trick, which almost proved successful.

If any one of the shots had struck the thin skin of either vessel, it would have offered no more resistance than a piece of paper to a rifle ball.

The accurate range of the first few shots is accounted for by the fact that the Spanish officers had ample time to make observations. The bearings of the two vessels were probably taken with a range-finder at the Santa Clara battery, and, as this battery is probably connected by wire with Morro, they were able to take bearings from both points, and by laborious calculations, they fixed the positions of the vessels pretty accurately. With such an opportunity for observation, it would have been no great trick for an American gunner to drop a shell down the smokestack of a vessel.

As soon as the ships sheered off after the first fire, the Spanish gunners lost the range, and their practice became ludicrous. If they had waited five minutes longer before opening fire, Captain Smith says it would have been well-nigh impossible to have missed the target.

By 28 May, Morrill was assigned duty as a guard ship at Tampa, which grew tense a week later when three Spanish warships were said to be closing on the roadstead there. She remained in the greater Tampa area until early August, when she was ordered to rejoin the blockade off Matanzas on the 11th, one that she was released from on the 14th with the cessation of hostilities.

She was then ordered to tow the small torpedo boat USS Ericsson back to Norfolk, where she arrived on the 21st. Morrill would be held there for another month on naval orders in reserve, just in case she was needed for further war service. She had suffered no casualties during the war and only very minor damage.

In addition to Orienta, Morrill is noted in her USCG history as also seizing the 3,364-ton French steamer, Lafayette, in conjunction with Annapolis, and the Espana, a little Spanish fishing sloop. Espana is marked as taken by the Morrill about three miles off Mariel, just after a sharp engagement. The USS Newport was close at hand at the time, and a prize crew made up from both ships brought the capture into Key West. The Espana sold at auction for $1,350 in prize money. Lafayette was later released after it was determined that she was not carrying Spanish soldiers or contraband and was permitted to continue to Havana, her declared destination.

Two of Morrill’s officers were later awarded Bronze West Indies Naval Campaign Medals under the authority of a joint resolution of Congress, approved on 3 March 1901.

White hull days

On 28 September 1898, after nearly a decade of tough service, Morrill, her extra wartime armament landed, left Norfolk for Philadelphia, to receive new boilers and undergo dry docking. Once complete, she shipped to her new homeport on the Great Lakes, replacing the larger 205-foot cutter Gresham, which had been cut in two to move to the East Coast during the SpanAm War, and the service was in no mood to bisect again to send her back.

Morrill arrived at her new home on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee on 19 November, closing out her busy year.

Later, shifting to Detroit, she would begin a very quiet time in her career, stretching some 17 years. Underway during the open shipping season, she patrolled the waters of Lakes Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario, aiding vessels in distress and enforcing navigation laws. When the ice came, she was laid up during the winter months.

Morrill became part of the service’s first Vessel Traffic Service (VTMS), established on 6 March 1896, to track the movement and anchorage of vessels and rafts in the St. Mary’s River from Point Iroquois on Lake Superior to Point Detour on Lake Huron.

Originally named the River Patrol Service, this first VTMS was comprised of the Revenue Cutter Morrell and lookout stations at Johnson’s Point, Middle Neebish Dyke, and Little Rapids Cut. The stations were connected by telegraph lines linked back to the Pittsburgh Steamship Company offices in Sault Sainte Marie. Throughout the next several years, many lookout stations were established and then closed as needs and funding levels fluctuated. At one point, there were as many as 11 active stations along the river. During the early days, lookouts communicated with passing ships by kerosene lanterns and signal flags. Often, messages were delivered to passing ships by lookouts rowing out to them in small dinghies.

USRC Morrill at a Great Lakes port, circa 1898-1917. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson. NH 45730

An image from a dry plate negative of the freighter William E. Corey passing alongside an unidentified, white-hulled vessel at anchor, circa 1905, is almost certainly the Morrill. Library of Congress – Detroit Publishing Co. Collection LC-D4-21878

She performed lots of local community service, including providing the honor guard and salutes for Civil War monument dedications (for instance, at Two Rivers, Wisconsin, in 1900, and another at Kenosha the same summer).

The U.S. Revenue Cutter W.P. Fessenden (center), along with other vessels in the harbor at Kenosha, Wis., for the unveiling of the Soldiers Monument in Library Park on Decoration Day, May 30, 1900. The ship on the left is the steam yacht Pathfinder owned by F. W. Morgan, Chicago, Ill. On the right outboard is the U.S. Revenue Cutter Morrill, and inboard of that is the venerable U.S.S. Michigan. The photograph is part of the Louis Thiers Collection of the Kenosha History Center. It was taken by Louis Milton Thiers (1858-1950) and created from a glass plate negative.

In addition to her regular duties, she also patrolled many regattas, including the T. J. Lipton Cup regatta off Chicago, Illinois, in August of 1904.

In 1906, her cruising grounds included the waters between Niagara Falls through Lakes Erie, St. Clair, and Huron to the Straits of Mackinac.

It seems during this period that her port side was her most photogenic.

U.S. Revenue Cutter Morrill, at Detroit with her glad rags flying, likely for July 4th between 1900 and 1910. Note her boat in the water. Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-34826

USRC Morrill before WWI, circa 1907, with her bow gun covered in canvas. Note the large building in the background, dressed with a Sherwin-Williams paint ad. Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-22466

USRC Morrill before WWI. Note her understated bow scroll and 6-pounder. Detroit Publishing Collection in the Library of Congress. LC-D4-9016

Morrill at the Goodrich Company dock in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Port bow view of vessel at dock near harbor entrance, with lighthouse at right in 1912. Wisconsin Maritime Museum P82-37-10-62C

Morrill, the revenue cutter Tuscarora, and eight reserve gunboats: USS Dubuque (PG-17), at the time the training ship by the Illinois Naval Militia; USS Don Juan de Austria (Wisconsin Naval Militia), USS Wolverine (Pennsylvania Naval Militia), USS Dorothea and USS Essex (Ohio Naval Militia), USS Gopher (Minnesota Naval Militia), USS Hawk (Naval Militia of New York) and USS Yantic of the Michigan Naval Militia, were the featured guests of the Chicago Yacht Club’s August 10-17, 1912 Great Naval Pageant which included 400 swabs from the training station at Lake Bluff, fireworks, and the conclusion of a cruise of 2,000 motorboats carrying 15,000 passengers from the Central Plain and inland rivers to Chicago to “rediscover” Lake Michigan.

As the club had 10 bona fide warships on hand, a mock battle was staged with large yachts, armed with saluting cannons, fleshing out the battle line.

As for the naval pageant, preparations were underway to defend Chicago against an August 10 naval attack. Under the command of the gunboat Dubuque, the attacking fleet of the Hawk, Gopher, Don Juan de Austria, and the revenue cutter Morrill from Lake Erie would be pitted against the Tuscarora, Yantic, Wolverine, Dorothea, and Essex. No part of Chicago, from Michigan Avenue to Oak Park, would be safe from the 4” guns trained on the City which could drop 4” shells with precision anywhere within the City limits. Hydroplanes traveling 40 mph were also to be used to determine whether this type of craft would be of assistance in warfare.

From 12-14 September 1912, Morrill and Dubuque patrolled the course of the speedboat races held by the Motor Club of Buffalo in the Niagara River.

Morrill and USS Dubuque (PG-17) at the Niagara motor boat races in September 1912. Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

Morrill at the opening of the Livingstone Channel in the Detroit River on October 19, 1912. Edward J. Dowling Collection, University of Detroit-Mercy

She also clocked in on more sobering duties. In the late summer of 1913, she found the lost 6,322-ton ore carrier SS Charles S. Price turned turtle, 13 miles northeast of Port Huron, Michigan, “taking every witness with her.”

The Kaiser to St. Helena!

On 4 August 1914, Morrill, along with other cutters, was ordered to “observe neutrality laws” after the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. This kicked into overdrive when the service, now part of the U.S. Coast Guard, was transferred to the Navy on 6 April 1917 with the country’s entry into the war.

Morrill was soon pulled from her familiar Great Lakes home in Detroit to patrol the Atlantic coast for German submarines out of Philadelphia with the 4th Naval District.

Leaving Detroit on 10 November 1917, she called at Quebec City on her way out and found herself in crowded Halifax on the afternoon of 5 December, anchoring near Dartmouth Cove to take on fuel and water.

Being jammed out of the main roadway saved her from destruction the next morning, with the cutter and her crew spending a fortnight in a very different Halifax, rendering aid and assistance.

Halifax explosion, with HMS Highflyer shown in the channel, via the Halifax Naval Museum

As detailed by the NHHC in Morrill’s DANFS entry:

Just after 0800, 6 December, the old French Line freighter Mont Blanc, carrying a full cargo of bulk explosives, was involved in a collision with the Norwegian steamship Iona in the Narrows of Halifax Harbor. A fire broke out on Mont Blanc, and at 0905, the ship and cargo exploded in a tremendous blast that shook all of Halifax.

The most reliable casualty figures list 1,635 persons killed and 9,000 injured in the tragedy. Sixteen hundred buildings were destroyed, and nearly 12,000 more within an area of 16 miles were severely damaged. Property damage was estimated at $35 million.

Morrill, not seriously damaged, turned her attention to the needs ashore. A rescue and assistance party under 2d Lt. H. G. Hemingway rendered valuable aid while the cutter stood by to tow other craft from the danger zone.

Morrill departed Halifax on 18 December. Her services had come to the attention of Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador to the United States, in a letter dated 9 January 1918, Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, noted that Morrill, “though considerably damaged by the violent explosion of munitions on another ship, was the first to render assistance to the distressed inhabitants of the stricken city.”

Morrill in Navy service, photographed during World War I. NH 45729

The cutter-turned-gunboat would remain part of the 4th Naval District throughout 1918 and well into 1919, retaining her prewar skipper, Capt.(T) George E. Wilcox, USCG.

This notably included responding to the tanker SS Herbert L Pratt, which struck a mine laid by U-151 off Cape Henlopen in June 1918.

SS Herbert L. Pratt (American tanker, 1918) under salvage after striking a mine off Cape Henlopen, southeast of Lewes, Delaware, on 3 June 1918. Note the tug alongside. This ship later served as USS Herbert L. Pratt (ID # 2339). U.S. History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 14

USS SC-71 and USS SP-544 (ex-yacht Sea Gull) tied up with another Section Patrol boat at the Cape May Naval Base, Sewells Point, New Jersey, circa 1918. The ship in the background is a Coast Guard Cutter, probably USCGC Morrill. A Curtiss HS-2L seaplane is taxiing by. NH 42452

Morrill in dry dock at Camden, New Jersey, in December 1918. Courtesy of D.M. McPherson, 1974. NH 79741

Back to a changing Coast Guard

After 21 months under Navy orders, Morrill returned to USCG duties and was reassigned to the Lakes Division on 28 August 1919.

The two-time warrior, back on her old Detroit station, resumed a quiet life of patrolling regatta, saving lives, and interdicting smuggling– the latter a task grown more common after the Volstead Act took effect in 1920 and Motown became a hotbed of bootlegging from Canada.

Morrill, 1921, Janes, showing her with two 6-pounders and assigned to Detroit

In October 1925, she was reassigned to Boston to serve as a mothership for small fast picket boats attempting to keep “Rum Row” under control just off Cape Cod. It was on the way to her new station that, while near Shelbourne, Nova Scotia, one of her whaleboats with 10 enlisted aboard overturned in the cold water while returning to the cutter at night from liberty ashore. Tragically, nine of them perished, one of the USCG’s worst peacetime losses of life. The bodies were later recovered and brought back to Boston by the cutter Tampa for proper burial.

Morrill would again suffer at the hands of the sea in November 1926 when she sliced in two the George O. Knowles Wharf in Provincetown, at the northern tip of Cape Cod, during a storm, causing $100,000 worth of damage ashore and leaving the cutter aground.

Via the Scrapbooks of Althea Boxell, Provincetown History Preservation Project.

Pulled off the shore at Provincetown, and was soon back to work. In April 1927, she came to the rescue of the grounded schooner Etta Burns, which turned out to be a rumrunner with 500 cases of booze aboard.

Morrill saved the crew– then put them in shackles.

With new 165 and 240-foot cutters on the way, Morrill was decommissioned at Boston on 19 October 1928, completing an almost 40-year career.

She was sold to the Deepwater Fishing and Exploration Corp. (Antonio De Domenico) of New York City for the princely sum of $7,100. Renamed Evangeline, it doesn’t seem she saw much commercial use as the former cutter burned to the waterline at Rockway, Long Island, on 30 July 1930.

Epilogue

Few relics of Morrill remain. The USCG chose not to name another cutter after her, despite her honorable record, including service in two wars. Her plans and logbooks are in the National Archives, although not digitized.

Morrill’s SpanAm War skipper, Horatio Davis Smith, extensively documented voyages of various cutters, including the cutter Golden Gate doing “good service” during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and transporting President Taft across the bay in 1909, and the cutter McCullough being the first to pass through the Suez Canal. He retired and later wrote an early history of the Revenue Marine Service. He passed in Massachusetts in 1918, aged 73.

Her Great War skipper, George E. Wilcox, went on to command the Coast Guard destroyer Downes out of New London– one of 31 destroyers that formed the Coast Guard Destroyer Force during the Rum War– and was head of the service’s Personnel Bureau when he passed in 1931, aged 50. He is buried at Arlington.

Several young officers served aboard our cutter who went on to make their mark on history. Besides the above-mentioned Godfrey Cardin— who led 1,400 men (fully one quarter of the mobilized service!) as the Captain of the Port of New York during the Great War, future admirals Joseph Francis Farley (a later USCG Commandant) and Detlef Frederick Argentine de Otte— a mustang who enlisted in the cutter service as a seaman in 1886 and retired in 1931 as one of just sixteen Commodores (later promoted to RADM on the retired list) in the history of the Coast Guard.

Morrill’s third lieutenant during the Mont Blanc disaster in Halifax, Henry G. Hemingway, later served as the gunnery officer aboard the USS San Diego in 1918 and survived the mining of that cruiser by the U-156. He went on to command the cutter Snohomish in 1923 during a search-and-rescue case off Port Angeles that defied belief and earned him the Gold Lifesaving Medal for his actions in saving the entire crew of the SS Nika during a gale.

Nicknamed “Soo Traffic,” the U.S. Coast Guard Vessel Traffic Service St. Marys River carries the lineage of the old River Patrol Service, which Morrill joined in 1898, and is still in operation after almost 130 years. They logged some 61,532 vessels, including ferries, tour boats, tankers, and freighters, as they transited through the St. Marys River in 2010.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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Warship Wednesday 4 March 2026: Lucky Tartar

Posted on March 4, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday 4 March 2026: Lucky Tartar

Photo by Harold William John Tomlin, Imperial War Museum catalog A 4114.

Above we see a cluster of happy ratings aboard the Tribal (Afridi) class destroyer HMS Tartar (G 43) in June 1941 after having bagged a German Heinkel in the slow crawl back to Scapa after helping sink Bismarck. They had several reasons to be proud of their little greyhound, as Tartar, some 85 years ago today, chalked up as many as five German vessels in the Norwegian Sea off the Lofoten Islands as part of Operation Claymore.

And that wasn’t even the hairiest of her surface actions during the war!

The Tribals

The Afridis were a new type of destroyer designed for the Royal Navy in the late 1920s off experience both in the Great War and to match the large, modern escorts on the drawing boards of contemporary naval rivals of the time.

The Royal Canadian Navy’s HMCS Huron (G24), in dazzle camouflage, is sailing out to sea during the Second World War, during one of her countless trans-Atlantic escorting runs. The Tribal-class destroyer, commissioned on July 28, 1943, also served in the Pacific theatre during the Korean War under the new pennant number 216.

These 378-foot vessels could make 36+ knots on a pair of geared steam turbines and a trio of Admiralty three-drum boilers, while an impressive battery of up to eight 4.7″/45 (12 cm) QF Mark XII guns in four twin CPXIX mountings gave them the same firepower as early WWI light cruisers (though typically just three turrets were mounted).

Twin Twin Mk XVI 4-inch mount on Commonwealth destroyer L M Tribal by Alex Colville 7.29.1944 19820303-226

Tartar’s “A” gun crew cleaning their guns back in port, 9 July 1944. Photo by Harold William John Tomlin IWM (A 23986)

Gun crew on Tribal-class destroyer HMCS Algonquin cleaning up their 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark XII guns after firing at the Normandy Beaches on 7 June 1944. Note that the crewman kneeling in the rear is holding a 4.7″ (12 cm) projectile. Library and Archives Canada Photograph MIKAN no. 3223884

Some 32 Afridis were planned in eight-ship flights: 16 for the RN (named after tribal warriors: HMS Eskimo, HMS Sikh, HMS Zulu, et al.), eight for the Royal Australian Navy, and eight for the Canadians. Of the Canadian ships, four were to be built by Vickers in the UK and the other four by Halifax shipyards in Nova Scotia. All the Canadian ships were to be named after First Nations tribes (Iroquois, Athabaskan, Huron, Haida, Micmac, Nootka, Cayuga, etc.)

An unidentified Tribal class destroyer in profile

Meet Tartar

Our subject is at least the eighth warship (the 17th if prizes and launches are included) to carry the name in the Royal Navy, going back to a 32-gun fifth rate launched in 1702. They had a storied past and earned our subject the carried-forward eight battle honors: Velez Malaga 1704, Lagos 1759, Ushant 1781, Dogger Bank 1781, Baltic 1855, Shimonoseki 1864, South Africa 1899-1900, and Dover Patrol 1914-18.

The Archer class torpedo cruiser HMS Tartar seen at the 1893 Columbian Naval Review on the Hudson in New York City via the LOC’s Detroit Postcard company collection. This sixth Tartar, in service from 1886 to 1906, is famous for her crew rushing dismounted 12-pounder guns across 200 miles of rough terrain from Durban to Ladysmith in October 1899 to relive counter Boer “Long Tom” artillery– the historical basis of the Royal Navy’s command field gun competition.

Her colorful ship’s crest was taken from a circa 1690 depiction of the Emperor of Tartary.

Laid down on 26 August 1936 at Swan Hunter, Wallsend, alongside sister HMS Somali (the only other Tribal built at the yard), the eighth Tartar was launched on 21 October 1937.

She commissioned on 10 March 1939 while the world was (largely) still at peace. Given the pennant L43 while building, this changed to F43 by completion (Somali was F33). She was later shifted to G43.

Tartar was fitted for use as a Flotilla Leader and constructed for £339,750, exclusive of armament and RN supplied equipment.

Following trials, she was transferred to the newly reformed 6th Destroyer Flotilla alongside sisters HMS Somali, Ashanti, Bedouin, Matabele, Punjabi, and Eskimo.

Her first skipper was Capt. Gerald Harman Warner, DSC, RN, aged 48, a regular who joined up in 1911 and earned his DSC in Russia in 1919.

Warner’s steady hand would be needed on Tartar very soon.

War

Just a fortnight into the conflict, on 14 September, while on patrol out of Scapa Flow looking for German blockade runners, Tartar picked up 42 survivors from the torpedoed British merchant Fanad Head, which had been sunk by U-30 about 200 nautical miles west of the Hebrides.

HMS Tartar G43 at a buoy WWII IWM FL 19719

In October 1939, Tartar sailed on her first of at least 28 convoys, the dozen steamer Narvik 1, shuttling British merchant vessels back to Methill from neutral Norway. She would join two other Norwegian runs, Convoy ON 1 and Convoy HN 1, by mid-November.

In late November, she sortied to help chase the roaming German battleship Scharnhorst following the latter’s sinking of the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi.

Norway

Over the several months into the new year, she logged nine more Norway-to-Methill and back convoys (HN 6, ON 7, HN 7, ON 9, ON 10, HN 11, ON 22, HN 22, and ON 24), and was part of the posse that unsuccessfully chased the German blockade runner Trautenfels. She then helped screen the new liner RMS (HMT) Queen Elizabeth in March 1940 on her first outbound run. By this time, her skipper was CDR Lionel Peyton Skipwith, RN, who had earned his lieutenant’s stripe in 1922.

In April 1940, Tartar was heavily engaged in the Norway campaign, screening the fast battlecruisers HMS Renown and Repulse during Operation Duck, bombarding captured Norwegian airfields around Stavanger in April, then in May, rushing the troopships Ulster Monarch and Ulster Prince from Scapa Flow to Åndalsnes and Molde to evacuate Allied troops. June saw her once more screening Allied evacuations from the doomed Norwegian front, operating alongside the battlewagon HMS Valiant during the withdrawals from the Narvik/ Harstad /Tromso pockets.

Late July, following the Fall of France and the Low Countries, saw her once again sortie out with the fleet to chase a German raider, the battlecruiser Gneisenau, without luck.

By August, she was again on convoy runs, AP 1 and AP 2, shuttling desperately needed troops to Egypt, then tagged along with the Dakar-bound Convoy MP.

September 1940 saw her back in Norwegian waters, escorting the carrier HMS Furious and the battleship HMS Nelson on Operation DF, an anti-shipping raid off Trondheim. The same month, she escorted the ships of the 1st Minelaying Squadron during egg emplacement in Northern Barrage and helped shepherd the wounded cruiser HMS Fiji after the latter was torpedoed by U-32 off the Shetlands.

October through December 1940 saw Tartar in a much-needed refit by HM Dockyard, Devonport, and by January 1941, she was back to chasing reports of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and riding shotgun on minelayer sorties, which would keep her very busy over the next couple of months.

4 March saw Tartar as part of Operation Claymore, the first large Commando raid on Norway, hitting the isolated Lofoten Islands, an all-day festival of destruction that saw the large cod boiling plant in the islands torched, 225 prisoners and collaborators bagged, and 300 local volunteers tag along back to Britain to join Free Norwegian troops. Further, Commandos sank four small German-controlled vessels by demolition charges while Tartar’s sister Bedouin sank a fourth via gunfire.

Raid on the Lofoten Islands, 4 March 1941. Commandos watching fish oil tanks burning.

Speaking of gunfire, during Claymore Tartar sank no less than two German merchant vessels at Solvær, the Hamburg (fishmeal factory ship, 6136 GRT) and Pasajes (1996 GRT). She likewise damaged the Kriegsmarine coal ship Elbing (1422 GRT) so badly that she had to be beached to keep from sinking and only returned to service a year later. Other reports cite Tartar as also sinking Bernhard Schulte (1058 GRT) and Gumbinnen (1381 GRT) during the operation, but most hold that the Army accounted for them.

Soon after, she was back to saving lives, joining on 25 March with sister HMS Gurkha to pull the entire 86-member crew from SS Beaverbrae when the freighter was sunk by land-based Condors of 1./KG 40.

Bismarck and Enigma

In May 1941, she was part of the epic chase that ran Bismarck to ground, escorting Rodney and being present at the leviathan’s sinking on the 27th. Ludovic Kennedy insists that film footage of Bismarck’s brutal last battle was apparently shot from HMS Tartar.

On the way back to Scapa with Tribal-class sister HMS Mashona, the two destroyers, low on fuel and forced to steam at a leisurely 15 knots, were attacked by numerous Luftwaffe Heinkel He 111 bombers of 1./KG 28 that left Mashona dead in the water and sinking. Tartar rescued her 184 survivors from her 14 officers and 215 ratings and landed them at Greenock.

Tartar then helped get the gang in Bletchley Park along in the Enigma decoding business when, sailing with the light cruiser HMS Nigeria and her sister Bedouin on 28 June, the task force chased down the 344-ton German weather ship (Wetterbeobachtungs-Schiff) Lauenburg (WBS 3) some 300 miles north-east of Jan Mayen Island via HF/DF. Although the weather ship’s crew tried to scuttle, Tartar’s boarding party managed to secure and recover codebooks and the vessel’s Enigma machine.

HMS Tartar’s boarding party prepares to board the German weather ship Lauenburg, north east of Jan Mayen.

The converted trawler, Lauenburg, deployed on Operations Gebiet northeast of Jan Mayen with a 20-man crew and eight meteorologists, began sending weather reports on 2nd June from naval grid square AB 47/48. She was sunk by Tartar on 28 June after the salvage of her sensitive equipment.

Lauenburg’s haul, coupled with a similar find from the captured trawler Munchen and the submarine U-110, effectively broke Naval Enigma.

July 1941 saw Tartar on an antishipping raid (Operation DN) off Norway’s Stadtlandet, followed by operations around and the evacuation of Spitsbergen (Operations FB and Gauntlet) in August.

By November 1941, she was screening the new battleship HMS Duke of York and later KGV during Russia-bound convoy operations out of Iceland, with the runs needing such big guns as the bruising heavy cruiser Hipper, the pocket battleship Scheer, and the actual battleship Tirpitz, which were all operating out of occupied Norway. As such, Tartar would sail with Convoys PQ 7B/QP 5 in January 1942, followed by PQ 12/QP 8 and PQ 13/QP 9 in March.

HMS Tartar going out on patrol. Taken from HMS Victorious at Hvalfjörður, Iceland, 6 February 1942. Photo by CH Parnall IWM A 7513

In June 1942, her next skipper, CDR St. John Reginald Joseph Tyrwhitt DSC, RN, arrived aboard, late of the destroyer HMS Juno (F 46)— on whose decks he earned a DSC.

Torch, Husky, Avalanche

HMS Tartar G43 28 June 1942

By August 1942, Tartar was nominated for detached service for support of the Malta relief operation, then sailed from Clyde as part of the escort for military convoys WS21 during Operation Pedestal. This soon saw her lock horns with the Italian subs Cobalto, Emo, and Granito, as well as U-73, missing torpedoes and replying with depth charges.

Her job done in the Med, she was back in Scapa by September and would sail with Force A out of Iceland to provide cover for Convoys PQ 18/QP 14.

Shifting back to the Med once again– twice in three months!– Tartar sailed with Force H from Scapa Flow on 30 October, including the familiar battlewagons Duke of York, Nelson, and Renown, bound to support the Torch Landings in North Africa.

She would remain in the Med through the rest of the year and continue to find work not only with Force H. Notably, on 23 March 1942, Tartar also picked up 14 survivors from the French armed trawler Sergent Gouarne that was sunk by U-755 about 25 miles north-east of Alboran Island.

Tartar was on hand for the June 1943 capture of the Italian islands of Pantellaria and Lampedusa between Sicily and Tunisia (Operation Corkscrew) in the weeks before the much larger Husky Landings on Sicily.

It was during Husky that Tartar came to the rescue of a second of her sisters when Eskimo was extensively damaged by two German dive bombers. Tartar towed Eskimo back to Malta, providing counter-U-boat and AAA defense the whole way, then returned to Sicily to conduct NGFS bombardments around the island.

August 1943 saw Tartar, once again with Rodney and Nelson’s screen, as part of Operation Hammer, plastering the Italian coastal batteries on the Calabrian coast adjacent to the Straits of Messina in preparation for the Avalanche landings in early September, during which Tartar supported the Allied landing between Catona and Reggio Calabria. It was there that Tartar embarked C-in-C, Mediterranean, ADM Andrew Browne Cunningham, to bring him inshore to inspect the landing beaches.

Off Salerno, she batted away attacks by German aircraft and radio-controlled glider bombs.

Salerno, 9 September 1943 (Operation Avalanche). The British destroyer HMS Tartar puts up an anti-aircraft barrage with her 4.5-inch AA guns to protect the invasion force from attack by enemy aircraft. Photo by Richard Gee, No. 2 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit. IWM NA 6579

France

In late October, Tartar sailed back to HM Dockyard, Devonport, for refit and remained there into early 1944 when, following post-refit trials, she joined the 10th Destroyer Flotilla at Plymouth as leader in February.

The list of ships in the 10th was both familiar and historic:

On 15 March 1944, CDR Basil Jones DSO, DSC, RN, became Tartar’s 8th skipper and the 10th Commodore by extension. He had earned his DSC as commander of the destroyer HMS Ivanhoe (D 16) and his DSO on HMS Pakenham (G 06).

HMS Tartar G43, 1944

In the months before D-Day, Tartar and her sisters took part in Operations Specimen and Tunnel (anti-shipping patrols of the Bay of Biscay and French west coast) and Operation Hostile (minelaying operations off the French coast).

Then came D-Day itself, with the 10th up front, almost a footnote in Tartar’s extensive career.

On the early morning of D+3, eight destroyers of the 10th DF encountered three German destroyers, the Type 36A Z24 and Z32, and the ZH1 (formerly the Dutch destroyer Gerard Callenburgh), along with the Elbing-class torpedo boat T24 (Theodor von Bechtolsheim). When the smoke cleared, ZH1 was at the bottom, and the mauled Germans limped off to fight another day.

Tartar was hit in the swirling action three times, setting fires in her galley and bridge. Four men were killed and 12 wounded, including Commodore Jones. She arrived back at Plymouth with her foremast hung over the side and all of the radar and communications dead.

But she arrived– and had her shrapnel-riddled ensign flying.

Gifted RN war photographer, LT Harold William John Tomlin, captured a great series of images of our battle-scarred destroyer while back in port on 9 June.

Battlescarred Tartar June 9, 1944 IWM (A 23985)

One of Tartar’s gun crews in great form on their return. IWM A 23987

A wounded Commodore Basil Jones, DSO, DSC, RN (right) of Twyford, Bucks, Commander of HMS Tartar, and Lieut Cdr J R Barnes, of Yelverton, Devon, Commander of HMS Ashanti. IWM A 23988

“A proud souvenir, the torn Battle Ensign of HMS Tartar carried in her action with German destroyers in the Channel. It was in this action on 8 June 1944 at Barfleur that a German destroyer (ZH 1) was torpedoed and sunk by the destroyers Tartar and Ashanti, and the former was hit on the bridge by three 120 mm shells. Left to right: Able Seamen E G Nurse of Swansea; W Wetherall of Chiswick; D J Harvey of Worcester; G Lilley of Rockhampton and P Gill of Manchester. They have all served over three years in Tartar.” IWM A 30906

August 1944 saw Tartar and company maul a convoy of small German coasters in the Bay of Biscay north of the Île d’Yeu. In a single wild action on the night of the 5th, she is credited with assisting in the sinking of German Convoy Nr. 4121 with the minesweepers M 263 and M 486, the patrol vessel V 414, and the coaster Otto (217 GRT) were sent to the bottom.

Headed to the Far East

By October 1944, Tartar was selected for a tropical overhaul with plans to ship her and the rest of the 10th to the East Indies Fleet.

Such modified, she left the Clyde in March 1945 bound for Gibraltar for passage to Trincomalee via the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Once there, she joined Force 63 with her flotilla by 28 April, screening the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and Richelieu for a sweep of the Andamans and Nicobars areas. It was during that sweep that Tartar, across a three-night period, bombarded Car Nicohar and Port Blair repeatedly.

She continued to bring the heat to the Japanese in Operation Dukedom, interdicting Japanese surface ships trying to evacuate troops from the Andamans. Then came a push into the occupied Dutch East Indies which included a surface action on 12 June 1945 when, sailing with Eskimo and Nubian, they intercept a Japanese convoy 20 miles north of Sumatra and sank the Japanese submarine chaser Ch 57 (420 tons) and landing ship Kuroshio Maru No.2 (950 tons, former T 149) in a short gun duel.

Afterall, her gunners were used to the work.

She later witnessed the Japanese surrender at Penang in September, then was ordered home, arrived at Plymouth on 17 November 1945, where she was promptly paid off and laid up for use as an accommodation hulk. Sold to BISCO for breaking up, she arrived at J Cashmere’s yard in Newport for demolition on 22 February 1948.

Tartar earned every one of her 12 WWII battle honors: Norway 1940-41 – Bismarck Action 1941 – Arctic 1941 – Malta Convoys 1942 – North Africa 1942-43 – Sicily 1943 – Salerno 1943 – Mediterranean 1943 – Normandy 1944 – English Channel 1944 – Biscay 1944 – Burma 1945.

Of her 15 RN Tribal class sisters, only Ashanti, Eskimo, and Nubian survived the war, and all were scrapped by 1949. Her old 10th Flotilla partner, Haida, the “most fightingest ship” in the Canadian Navy, saw Korean War and Cold War service and survives as a memorial.

HMCS Haida today

Epilogue

Tartar had been adopted by the civil community of Finchley during a 1942 savings week program, and the area, now part of the London Borough of Barnet, maintains some small relics from her.

Of her skippers, her circa 1939 commander, Warner, retired in 1946 as a full captain. Bismarck and Russia Convoy-era Skipwith retired in 1952 and passed in 1975. Tyrwhitt, who commanded her for the Torch, Avalanche, and Husky landings, remained in the Navy until 1958, when he retired as a vice admiral after commanding the cruiser HMS Newcastle during Korea. The unsinkable Basil Jones pinned a Bar to his DSC for Tartar’s actions off Normandy in 1944 and faded into history after the war.

The RN recycled the name one last time, for a new 2,700-ton Tribal-class frigate, HMS Tartar (F133), that served from 1962 to 1984 and then for a further 16 years with the Indonesians. Her motto, appropriately, was “Without Fear,” and she had 21 battle honors carried forward to back it up.

Aerial view of Tribal-class frigate HMS Tartar (F133), 1971. Note her “T A” recognition letters on her heli rep platform. IWM HU 130006

While the current British government would never authorize a new warship by that name, it is the Admiralty’s loss.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

If you like this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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I’m a member, so should you be!

Groups launch The Devastator Project to rescue and preserve a TBD-1

Posted on February 3, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

TBD-1 Devastator of VT-5 pictured in flight over Southern California 5-T-& Bu 0031 Yorktown Nov 1939. The TBD-1 Devastator ranks among the most significant aircraft in U.S. naval aviation history. It was the Navy’s first all-metal, low-wing, semi-monocoque plane and played a critical role during the opening months of the Pacific campaign.. Photo/description from the Naval Aviation Museum

Most military and naval history buffs remember the much-maligned Douglas TBD-1 Devastator “torpecker” for its Ride of the Valkyries style use against the Japanese carriers at Midway, in which 41 Devastators launched, carrying their unreliable Bliss-Leavitt Mark 13 aerial torpedoes, and only six returned to their carriers, without making a single effective torpedo hit.

Torpedo Squadron 2 (VT-2) in the “old days” before WWII, back when they flew Douglas TBD Devastators, and were the first squadron in the Navy to start doing so, in Oct. 1937

Insignia: Torpedo Squadron Five (VT-5) Emblem adopted during the later 1930s, when VT-5 served on board USS Yorktown (CV-5). This reproduction features a stylized representation of a TBD Devastator torpedo plane and an explanation of the insignia’s design. Courtesy of John S. Howland, 1975. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.color Catalog #: NH 82628-KN

Those 41 were almost fully a third of the type that existed, with just 129 production airframes delivered to the Navy between 1937 and 1939.

Forgotten is their more effective performance in raids on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, Wake and Marcus Islands, just after Pearl Harbor, and in sinking the Japanese Zuiho-class light carrier Shoho during the Battle of the Coral Sea.

A lone Devastator over Wake Island in late Feb 1942

Torpecker success! Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho under attack by U.S. Navy carrier aircraft in the late morning of 7 May 1942. Photographed from a USS Yorktown (CV 5) torpedo plane. Official U.S. Navy photograph 80-G-17027.

Withdrawn from the Pacific after Midway and replaced with the TBM Avenger, the surviving Devastators in VT-4 and VT-7 remained in service briefly in the Atlantic and in training squadrons until 1944, when they were all scrapped by the end of the year.

That left those scattered around the bottom of the Pacific as the sole remaining TBDs in existence.

And that brings us to The Devastator Project.

The project brings together the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, Texas A&M University’s Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation, the Republic of the Marshall Islands Cultural and Historic Preservation Office, Jaluit Atoll local government officials and traditional leaders, and the Naval History and Heritage Command. The team aims to recover Bureau Number 1515, a TBD-1 Devastator (5-T-7 of VT-5) that has remained submerged off Jaluit Atoll for more than 80 years.

BuNo 1515 launched from USS Yorktown (CV-5) and ditched in the Jaluit lagoon on Feb. 1, 1942, during the U.S. Navy’s first offensive operation in the Pacific. All three naval aviators ( Ens Herbert R Hein, Jr, AOM 3c Joseph D. Strahl, and S1c Marshall E. “Windy” Windham) survived the emergency landing and later endured captivity as Japanese prisoners of war until their liberation in 1945.

Bureau Number 1515, a Douglas TBD-1 Devastator submerged off Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The aircraft went down Feb. 1, 1942. Air and Sea Heritage Foundation photo

The project seeks to recover the Jaluit Devastator and preserve it as-is.

Greyhound Sardines

Posted on January 23, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

A cluster of Great War-era Wickes (Lumberton) class four-piper flush deck destroyers seen out of commission, in mothballs at San Diego, 4 April 1939. The converted fast minelayers USS Montgomery (DM-17) and USS Gamble (DM-15) are present in the foreground, although they still wear their original greyhound hull numbers (DD-121 and DD-123, respectively), but are ornamented with the Mine Force “meatball” insignia on the bow.

Those masts are close enough that Tarzan could swing from one to the other and never touch the deck!

Reactivated to join Mine Division Two in time for Pearl Harbor, Montgomery would be irreparably damaged by a mine in Ngulu Lagoon, Caroline Islands, 17 October 1944, with the death of four of her crew, knocking her out of the war. She was stricken and sold for scrap in 1946.

Likewise, Gamble was also knocked out by Japanese bombs in February 1945 while off Iwo Jima and never repaired.

Between just these two unsung “tin cans,” they earned 11 battle stars in the Pacific, the only way that small boys can: the hard way.

Always Ready to Ditch this Ride

Posted on January 22, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

U.S. Navy Lt. F.A.W. Franke takes off in an early McDonnell F3H-2M Demon (BuNo 137003) of Fighter Squadron VF-61 “Jolly Rogers” from aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42) during carrier qualifications, 10 April 1957.

U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 2011.003.287.024

Of note, with the adoption of the Martin-Baker 0/0 ejection seat still a minute down the road, cats and traps at this time were done with the canopy open.

Of the staggering 265 Naval pilots that died in 1957, 172 did so following aircraft problems at low altitude/low airspeed.

Early jet operations from carriers at sea were astonishingly deadly.

Superman to the rescue!

Posted on January 15, 2026 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Some 85 years ago this week, on 16 January 1941, the fine Cammell Laird-built Pacific Steam Navigation Company’s SS Oropesa (14,075 GRT) was torpedoed in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Rockall in the Western Approaches by the Type VIIC U-boat U-96 (Kptlt. Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock).

Hit by the first torpedo at 03:56, Lehmann-Willenbrock stuck around and pumped a second G7a into her a few minutes later, which missed, then two further fish by 05:59, sending the steamer to the bottom with the loss of 106 of the 249 people on board. Those who rode her to Davy Jones included Oropesa’s The Master, Harry Croft, 98 crewmen, a DEMS gunner, and six passengers.

Rushing to the scene came the Admiralty W-class destroyer HMS Westcott (D47) and two rescue tugs, HMRT Tenacity and Superman. They plucked 109 waterlogged crew, one DEMS gunner, and 33 passengers from the water and landed them at Liverpool.

HMRT Superman (W89)

Built in 1933 by Cochrane & Sons Ltd., Selby for United Towing Co. Ltd., Hull, Superman was a little fella, just 120 feet overall length, 27 of beam, and 14 of depth. Displacing 359 grt, she ran a single 900ihp 3cylTE steam engine crafted by C D Holmes Ltd., Hull.

Requisitioned for Admiralty service on 1 November 1939, she was given pennant W89, call sign GWFJ, broke out a White Ensign, and was armed with a 12-pounder gun and 4 machine guns left over from the Great War. Two .50 caliber Vickers guns would later augment this battery.

Initially based in Grimsby, HMRT Superman was later used as an ocean rescue tug, pulling the Emmy (Greek, 3895 GRT, built 1914) free from a grounding in the Irish Sea in January 1940. In August 1940, she rushed to the aid of Convoy HX-66A, which lost the freighters Mill Hill, Chelsea, and Norne to U-32 (Hans Jenisch).

By 1944, Superman was selected as a Mulberry tug and notably towed Whale unit S21 to Mulberry A just days after the Normandy landings and Phoenix caisson units to others.

Based at Pembroke Dock at the end of the war, she was returned to her owner on 14 December 1945 and sailed commercially for another two decades.

Superman was scrapped at Queensborough, Kent, in 1964.

The RFA would later acquire its own Superman in 1953, a sturdy 180-foot fleet tug built at Alexander Hall & Co., Aberdeen. The latter Superman and her two sisters, Samson and Sea Giant, would serve through the Cold War.

Le Tonnant Found

Posted on December 23, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

The lost Redoubtable (Pascal)-class submarine of the M6 series (Agosta type) Le Tonnant (“Thunderer”) (Q172) has been discovered.

Built by F.&Ch de la Méditerranée and commissioned on 1 June 1937, she made a high-profile pre-war deployment to Indochina, participated in some early war patrols with the Toulon-based 3rd Submarine Squadron before the Fall of France in June 1940, and ventured as far as Dakar.

She then sailed under orders from Vichy until 15 November 1942, when she was scuttled off Cadiz, Spain, by her own crew following the German occupation of Southern France and the British-American occupation of French North Africa.

Her crew all managed to reach Spain and be interned for the duration, while Le Tonnant settled into the seabed.

Of Le Tonnant’s 31-boat class, only five survived the war, including the famous Casabianca (Q183).

Now, 83 years later, her wreck has been documented by a Franco-Spanish research team by the Univesite de Bretagne Occidentale.

Warship Wednesday 17 December 2025: They Give a Good Account of Themselves

Posted on December 17, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday 17 December 2025: They Give a Good Account of Themselves

Courtesy of Mr. Donald M. McPherson, Naval History and Heritage Command NH 68493

Above we see the awning-covered and white painted Insect-class gunboat HMS Ladybird (P.0A) lounging on the Yangtze River during China’s warlord period, circa the late 1920s. A globetrotter, she witnessed history around the world in two official wars and several undeclared ones.

Don’t let her innocuous profile and name fool you, Ladybird was a killer, as three Italian freighters found out some 85 years ago today.

The Insects

The dozen shallow draught river gunboats of the Insect class, some 237 feet long and 635 tons displacement, were flat-bottomed ships designed by Yarrow to operate in shallow, fast-flowing rivers, and able to float in just four feet of brown water.

They had enough muscle (2,000 ihp plant on Yarrow boilers and twin VTE engines and three rudders) to make 14 knots (designed, yet “easily made” 18 knots on trials), thus capable of going upstream against the flow as needed and could turn “almost on a six-pence.”

Get a feel for the class from this excellent model of the Insect class gunboat HMS Tarantula in the RMG collections.

F7752 001

F7752 004

F7752 003

F7752 002

While ordered as a class in February 1915 for emergency war service in Europe (e.g. to fight on the Danube against Austrian river monitors but instead against the “Johnny Turk” in the Tigris flotilla), the consensus is that they would, after the Great War had wrapped up, see China service on the Yangtze and similar large waterways to protect the Crown’s interests in the often lawless region. Thus, they were classed and described as “Large China Gunboats” during construction, which also allowed cover for their planned use in Europe and the Middle East.

They were well-armed for such endeavors, with a BL 6-inch Mk VII naval gun forward and another one in the rear to poke holes in said Austrian river monitors. An elevated central battery clustered around the single stack and mast held a group of six Maxim/Vickers water-cooled .303 machine guns and a couple of smaller QF Mk I 12-pounders. All of these guns, even the MGs, had front splinter shields. However, as the muzzles of the 12 pdrs were immediately over head of the crews working the 6-inchers, being one of these gunners was certainly hard on the hearing.

Aerial photograph of British Aphis (Insect) class gunboat. Note the two 6-inchers, fore and aft.

According to the excellent site on these ships, maintained by Taylor Family Collection:

Their steel plating was thin by warship standards – only five-sixteenths of an inch amidships, tapering to about one-eighth of an inch at the ends. The decks were strengthened in the vicinity of the main armament mountings with steel doublers three-eighths of an inch thick, and a three-quarter-inch steel doubler was also fitted on the sheer strake over the mid-ship section as extra stiffening. Beyond this, they carried no armour and had no double bottoms, unlike most ships.

That their armour was so minimal is not surprising given that these were essentially “kitset” ships specially designed to be broken down and reassembled. Heavy armour plating or additional construction “stiffening” was counterproductive. Active service with the Tigris Flotilla, however, resulted in rearming – a 2-pounder pom-pom added, four of the .303–inch Maxim guns removed, and a 3–inch anti-aircraft gun installed in their place. All were fitted for towing kite balloons (to carry artillery observers). Initially, sandbags were built up around the battery deck for the protection of personnel, but later a 5–foot shield made of ¼ inch chrome steel plate was built all around this deck as can be seen in the photos.

All 12 were named for insects and acrahnids (Aphis, Bee, Cicala, Cockchafer, Cricket, Glowworm, Gnat, Mantis, Moth, Scarab, Tarantula, and our Ladybird) as befitting their role and, to speed up delivery, were ordered simultaneously from five small yards (four from Barclay, two each from Ailsa, Lobnitz, Sutherland S.B, and Wood/Skinner). No, although they were to a Yarrow design, that esteemed firm was too busy making “real” warships to deal with such bugs.

Meet Ladybird

Our subject was laid down in 1915 at Lobnitz, Renfrew, as Builder’s Hull No. 804. Her slightly older sister, HMS Gnat, No. 803, was built nearly side-by-side at the same yard. Gnat hit the water in December 1915 while Ladybird slid down the way the following April. The two would commission by May 1916.

Ladybird’s original pennant number, issued in January 1916, was P.5A. This later shifted to P.0A in January 1918.

HMS Ladybird, at Port Said, Egypt, November 1917. Note the cruiser and destroyers in the background. Photo by Surgeon Oscar Parkes, IWM SP 560

Her first skipper was Acting Commander Vaughan Alexander Edward Hanning-Lee, an Englishman from a long-service naval family. He had 16 years of service behind him, including command of several destroyers and the gunnery training ship HMS St. George (an old Edgar-class cruiser), as well as detached service at Salonika. Hanning-Lee would remain in command of Ladybird through the end of 1918.

War!

The Insects, with Serbia all but knocked out of the war and access to the Danube closed, were repurposed to fight in the Eastern Med and Mesopotamia, while Cricket, Cicala, Cockchafer, and Glowworm were kept in British home waters to defend against German zeppelin raids.

Gnat, Mantis, Moth and Tarantula were towed to the Persian Gulf to join the Tigris Flotilla while Bee and Scarab guarded the Suez Canal.

Ladybird and sister Aphis would be detailed to Egypt, and had a very busy 1917, giving good, if somewhat undetailed service against the Ottomans in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, notably providing fire support for Bulfin’s XXI Corps during the victorious Third Battle of Gaza in November.

“Egypt scenes. Monitor HMS Ladybird in the Suez Canal, 1917.” This photo is part of an album compiled by Sub. Lieutenant Bertie Henry Buck, during his service in WWI and is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s collection. Object number: 00007425_9

CDR Hanning-Lee earned a DSO aboard Ladybird and a later OBE for his gallant conduct and services in the Mediterranean, retiring soon after.

The Armistice brought an end to the hostilities, of a sort.

Wait, another war?

While peace had officially broken out across the world, the Insects would spend the next several years, often deck-deep in combat, although not officially in war.

Cicala, Cockchafer, Cricket, and Glowworm sailed through the Barents Sea to Archangel for service as part of the Dvina River Force, supporting the White Russians, where they would remain through most of 1919, fighting the Reds.

Six went to the Far East with Mantis and Tarantula dispatched to the West River near Hong Kong, while Bee, Gnat, Moth, and Scarab were sent to the Yangtze River.

Aphis and our Ladybird, however, were shipped in February 1919 to join Capt. Vernon Haggard’s newly formed Naval Brigade on the Danube, aka the British Danube Flotilla, to enforce the naval terms of the Armistice with Austria-Hungary in conjunction with the Entente military mission in Budapest, the latter led by the unpopular French Lt.Col. Ferdinand Vix.

A group of British, Serbian, and Yugoslav officers at Baja on the River Danube in the summer of 1919. Front row from left to right: Commander Jellacic, commander of Yugoslav war vessels on the Danube; Lieutenant Colonel Milossovic, commander of the 9th Serbian Infantry Regiment; Captain Vernon Haggard RN, commander of the Royal Navy Danube Flotilla; Lieutenant Colonel Draskio, town commandant at Baja; Surgeon Lieutant Commander P F Cope RN, medical officer to the Danube Flotilla and Father Gregorevitch, Yugoslav Army Chaplain. Rear row from left to right: Lieutenant Pric, commanding officer of the patrol boat NERETVA; Commander R Stone RN, commanding officer of HMS LADYBIRD; Lieutenant Andric, first lieutenant of the Yugoslav monitor SAVA; Lieutenant Bacic, adjutant to Commander Jellacic; Lieutenant Commander H Hewitt, Senior British Naval Officer, Baja; Lieutenant Commander E Edmonds RN, commander of British MLs on the Danube; Lieutenant E Pigou RN, British liaison officer in SAVA; Lieutenant Kovacek, first lieutenant of the Yugoslav monitor DRAVA; Paymaster Lieutenant Commander Fritz Reger, secretary to Captain Haggard, Lieutenant H S Beresford RN, British liaison officer in DRAVA; unknown Segrbian Army officer. IWM Q 115088

This small shallow water river force also included at least four new Vickers-designed Elco-built 86-foot ML.51 motor launches, ML 196, ML.210, ML.228, and ML.434. The MLs, armed with a 3pdr plus depth charges and carrying an eight-man crew, were dangerous boats as they had gasoline engines and were poorly ventilated, with the 196 and 434 boats later catching fire and sinking in the river.

The flotilla also held control, at least temporarily in conjunction with the French, of the former Austrian KuK Donau Flotilla monitors Bodrog, Czuka, Wels, Stör, Vizu, Lachs, Fogas, Barsch, and Compó, which had lost many of their officers but still had their mostly Croat crews aboard.

While based in Baja, Hungary, the Flotilla got into a hairy situation when Bela Kun’s Soviet Republic of Hungary came to power between March and August 1919, which coincided closely with the eight-month-long and almost totally forgotten in the West, Hungarian–Romanian War and Hungarian–Czechoslovak War (both of which Hungary lost). Then came reactionary Hungarian Admiral Miklós Horthy’s “White Terror” after the fall of the communist government, which lasted through 1921.

All of this was tense to say the least, with one of the Flotilla’s vessels (ML.210) being captured by Hungarian Reds at one point and the old Austrian monitors always one step away from casting their lot with one faction or another, thus requiring constant minding– with the Yugolsavs taking custody of most of them in November 1919, although the Trianon Peace Treaty of 1920 divided the old KuK Donau Flotilla between Austria and Hungary.

Jane’s 1921 listing on the class, note Glowworm, Aphis, Ladybird, and ML 196 listed as being in the British Danube Flotilla. Glowworm had only joined the force in 1920.

The British quit the Danube in January 1926, but Ladybird had left the force before then, being laid up in reserve at Malta on 17 April 1922, after all the interventions, wars, and revolutions in Hungary had passed.

While Ladybird was lucky, others of her class serving abroad in similar undeclared conflicts were not. Cicala, serving on the broad Dvina River in Northern Russia in 1919, was the host to a mutinous crew and was later mined by the Bolshevik Reds and bottomed out, but was raised and returned to service. Likewise, both Glowworm and Cockchafer were badly damaged in a munitions barge explosion at Beresnik/Bereznik in August 1919 but were similarly repaired.

HMS Cicala in North Russia (Yeoman of Signals George Smith)

Once the Danube Flotilla was disbanded, Aphis and Ladybird— the latter recommissioned at Malta on 29 January 1927– were sent to join their sisters in the Far East while Glowworm, her wounds her Russia service never truly healed, was sent to Malta where in 1928 it was decided by the Admiralty that, due to her poor condition, she should be sold for scrap in September of that year.

Jane’s 1929 listing on the class note with Glowworm absent. By this time, the class was all based in China/Hong Kong, where they would run into a whole different set of problems.

Interbellum

The Insect-class river gunboat HMS Ladybird on route from Hong Kong to Shanghai in July 1927. IWM Q 80179

As noted by the December 1984 edition of the (Australian) Naval Historical Review:

Typically, these gunboats…carried two officers and sometimes a doctor; six or seven petty officers and leading seamen, plus 17 able seamen. The remainder of the 50-odd souls aboard were Chinese servants, cooks, seamen, and black gang. Obviously, British ability to mount a landing force fell well below the capabilities of the ‘new six’ US gunboats, with their 4 line officers, doctor, and about 50 US enlisted. However, the British POs enjoyed more responsibility and authority than the American, as all RN officers could be off the ship at the same time.

It was during this period that, from 21 April 1932 to 30 September 1933, Ladybird was commanded by LCDR Eric Wheeler Bush, the youngest recipient of the D.S.C. in history, at not quite 17 while on HMS Revenge at the Battle of Jutland.

The U.S. Navy’s flotilla of China Station patrol boats (ala Sand Pebbles) worked so closely with the RN’s boats that a number of excellent images of Ladybird exist in the NHHC archives from this era, many from the collections of Donald M. McPherson and Philip Yarnell.

HMS Ladybird at Shanghai, China circa the 1920s. NH 68496

Looking down on the Yangtze River, Ichang, China 1920s. USS Elcano (PG – 38) is above the “X” (bottom, left of center). HMS Ladybird (A British gunboat) is forward and to the right of ship with large single stack at bottom right center. USS Monocracy (PG-20) is forward and above Ladybird. NH 67243

HMS Ladybird British river gunboat, view taken at Ichang, China, May 1937. NH 81636

Yangtze River Patrol. A British gunboat on the Yangtze river, probably the HMS Ladybird, possibly near Ichang, China circa the 1920s. NH 67311

Yangtze River Patrol. A British gunboat on the Yangtze river, probably the HMS Ladybird, possibly near Ichang, China circa the 1920s. NH 67312

She also frequently found herself a consort to the ill-fated American gunboat USS Panay (PR-5). She and sister HMS Bee, the river flotilla flagship at the time, were on hand for Panay’s final day during the evacuation of Nanking in December 1937.

USS Panay (PR-5) in background right, beyond HMS Ladybird, British river gunboat. Weldon James of UPI News Service waves a handkerchief at Panay prior to his and others’ evacuation on the U.S. ship at Nanking, China, 12 December 1937. NH 50838

Panay, escorting three small Standard Oil tankers, Mei Ping, Mei An, and Mei Hsia, which in turn were packed with some 800 Chinese employees of the company and their families, was attacked on 12 December by Japanese naval aircraft while some 28 miles upstream from Nanking. The force, comprised of Yokosuka B4Y Type-96 “Jean” bombers and Nakajima A4N Type-95 biplane fighters, sank all four ships.

The same Japanese bombers later struck SS Wanhsien, owned by the China Navigation Company, part of a British company, later that day with negligible damage.

Ladybird and Bee, along with the American gunboat USS Oahu (PR-6), rushed to the scene in the aftermath and took aboard survivors of the vessels. Three Americans and an Italian correspondent were killed and at least 48 were seriously wounded.

A Japanese field artillery unit near Wuhu on the Yangtze, under orders from Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, opened fire on the scene with Bee dodging a near-miss and Ladybird taking six hits, suffering several casualties. One of Ladybird’s crew, Sick Berth Attendant Terrance N Lonergan, C/MX 50739, became the first member of the Royal Navy to perish in conflict with the Japanese since 1862.

HMS Ladybird, view of the damage on the port side sustained in an artillery attack by a Japanese Army battery on 12 December 1937, the same day as the USS Panay (PR-5) sinking. Courtesy of Vice Admiral Morton L. Deyo, USN (retired) NH 77816

USS Oahu (PR-6). The coffin of SK1 C.L. Ensminger, USN, lies beneath a U.S. flag on the fantail of the Oahu, as she heads to Shanghai, China, with the survivors of sister ship USS Panay (PR-5) which was sunk on 12 December 1937 by Japanese planes. British gunboat HMS Ladybird is astern of Oahu, 15 December 1937. Ensminger was killed in the attack on Panay. NH 50808

The class also thinned once again, with Bee, in poor material shape, being paid off in 1938 when the new Dragonfly-class gunboat HMS Scorpion arrived from Britain. Ex-Bee was sold in Shanghai for scrap on 22 March 1939 for just £5,225.

And another war

When Hitler sent his legions into Poland in September 1939, kicking off WWII, Ladybird was still in China, where she would remain for the rest of the year until she and sister Aphis were nominated for service in the Mediterranean. Their local Chinese crew would remain behind, transferred throughout the station.

In the meantime, both gunboats were upgraded during a refit in Singapore, landing their original 6”/45 Mk VII guns for more capable 6”/50 Mk XIII guns which had been removed from the Jutland veteran battleship HMS Agincourt in 1922 and sent East. They also picked up two Vickers 40mm/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII pom-poms in place of their old 12 pounders. The latter would become a common addition on the Insects in this period.

Other members of the class would also later be transferred to fight the Germans and Italians in the Med and Middle East, leaving just Cicala and Moth in Hong Kong while Mantis was paid off in January 1940. It was at about this time that the 10 remaining Insects shelved their P-series pennants for T-series, with Ladybird becoming T58, Aphis T57, et. al.

In January 1940, Ladybird’s new skipper was 39-year-old recalled LCDR (retired) John Fulford Blackburn, who had been on the retired list since 1934. Everyone has to do their part and all that. Her captain since March 1938, LCDR Robert Sydney Stafford, would take command Aphis.

On 3 March 1940, Ladybird and Aphis left Penang in Malaysia under escort of the cruiser HMS Durban (D 99), which later handed them over to the cruiser HMAS Hobart (D 63), to proceed to the Mediterranean via Colombo, Aden, and the Suez.

Once in the Med, she became something of a regular off the coast of the Italian Libyan port of Bardia, home to a full army corps.

In Operation MB 1, on 23 August 1940, the Australian destroyer HMAS Waterhen covered Ladybird when she boldly entered Bardia, and fired point-blank on buildings and harbor defenses. Both vessels withdrew safely after the attack. The slow-going Ladybird returned to Alexandria on the 25th, trailing Waterhen by a day.

Ladybird would repeat her punishment of the harbor on 17 December 1940. Sailing with the destroyers HMAS Voyager and HMAS Vendetta providing cover, Ladybird, sister Aphis, and the monitor HMS Terror splashed the Italian coasters Galata, Giuseppina D, and Vincenzino, shelled and sunk in the mud at Bardia.

She then spent a week off the town over the New Years, with Aphis, Terror, Gnat, and Ladybird supported by the destroyers Voyager and HMS Dainty while the carrier HMS Illustrious, two cruisers, and four destroyers poked around further offshore– wishing the Italians to sortie out– and the bruising battleships HMS Barham, Warspite and Valiant even coming in close enough to lend their big guns in two bombardment runs on 3 January 1941, landing 244 15-inch shells.

This was during Operation Compass, the strike by the British 7th Armored Division and 6th Australian Division, with Free French Colonial troops brought in by ship from Syria, to seize the Italian stronghold, wrapping up Lt. Gen Annibale Bergonzoli’s XXII Army Corps in the process and capturing 36,000 Italian troops along with 400 guns and 900 vehicles by 5 January 1941. Ladybird inherited a second-hand 20mm/65 M1939 Breda AAA gun and several crates of shells in the process.

31 December 1940. “A visit to a company of Free French in the Bardia area, troops landing on the coast from a warship.” HMS Ladybird. stationary with a small boat in the foreground. Photo by Capt. Geoffrey John Keating, No. 1 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit IWM (E 1538)

Australian combat cameraman Damien Peter Parer was on board Ladybird when she bombarded Bardia and took dozens of snaps of the gunboat during this New Years trip, with most of them in low-rez format online at the Australian War Memorial.

31 December 1940. “Off Bardia. At the safest end of the 6-inch guns on HMS Ladybrd during the bombardment of Bardia.” Parker AWM 004991

31 December 1940. “Off Bardia. Rapid fire from the 6-inch guns on HMS Ladybrd during the bombardment of Bardia.” Parker AWM 004990

31 December 1940. “Off Bardia. The crew aboard HMS Ladybrd gives the Pom Pom a drink during the bombardment of Bardia.” Parker AWM 004993

He also caught numerous images of her crew snatching a bit of rest when they could between gun runs and batting away successive low-quality Italian air raids.

And a meal in the Petty Officers’ Mess, complete with the ship’s cat, Cinders. AWM 005005 and 005013.

Over 21/22 January 1941, Ladybird, Aphis, and Terror gave the same treatment to the Italian port of Tobruk on the Libyan/Egyptian border, where another 20,000 Italians were captured.

In February 1941, Ladybird landed 24 Royal Marines as part of Operation Abstention, a failed attempt to seize the Italian island of Kastelorizo (Castellorizo) in the Aegean, about 80nm from Rhodes. Sailing from Suda Bay, Crete with the destroyers HMS Decoy and Hereward packed with 200 men of No. 50 Army Commando, Ladybird was struck by bomb dropped by an Italian SM.79, wounding three sailors just after she put her Marines ashore. Damaged and low on fuel, she was forced to reembark her Marines and head to Haifa, one of several spoilers to the mission.

Once Rommel arrived in North Africa, the British fortunes in the theatre reversed and, not only was Bardia recaptured, but the German Afrika Korps surged into Egypt.

In early April, Ladybird and a few other ships were trapped in Tobruk with 27,000 other Allied troops, mostly of the 9th Australian Division but also with smatterings of Free Czech and Polish units. Together, these “Rats of Tobruk” held out for the next seven months against all odds as Rommel tried to reduce and either capture or wreck the port.

Soon, the cargo ships SS Draco, Bankura, and Urania, along with the 3,000-ton armed boarding vessel HMS Chakla were sunk by Axis aircraft of the Luftwaffe’s 3./StG 1 and 2./StG 2, along with the Regia Aeronautica’s 96, 236, and 239 Squadriglias.

“Armed boarding vessel Chakla, under bombing attack in Tobruk harbour, 1941-04-29. Note her camouflage scheme, the colours of which are probably 507a (the darker grey) and 507c. The Chakla was sunk as a result of the attack. (still from a cine film).” AWM 127950.

On 7 May, the Hunt-class minesweeper HMS Stoke (J 33) was bombed and sunk at Tobruk by Stukas of 2./StG 2, with the loss of 21 of her crew. Ladybird rushed to pick up her survivors.

Five days later, Ladybird had her turn in the barrel and was sent to the bottom after a bomb strike from II./StG 2, settling on an even keel in ten feet of water with three men killed, all listed as “missing presumed killed”:

George R Morley, Able Seaman, P/J 59384, MPK
Wiliam Olley, Able Seaman, P/JX 171410, MPK
Edward Paton, Able Seaman, P/JX 152815, MPK

Tobruk, Cyrenaica, Libya. c. May 1941. A general view of bomb damaged buildings. The smoke from the harbour is from HMS Ladybird set on fire by an enemy bomb. (Donor Sergeant Maxwell) AWM 022116

By July, Ladybird’s sister HMS Cricket was similarly crippled by an Italian bomber off Mersa Matruh, Egypt while another sister, Gnat had the first 20 feet of her bow knocked off by German submarine U79 at Bardia in October and was knocked out of the war.

Even with the gunboat on the bottom and her crew dispersed through the fleet, the hulk of the old Ladybird hosted men of No. 40 Battery, 14th (“West Lothian Royal Scots” as they had converted from a Royal Scots infantry company) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery (T.A.), who lived aboard her remaining topside, roughing it on a ghost ship with a few tricks still up her sleeve.

14 August 1941. Original wartime caption, emphasis mine: “Tobruk. HM Submarine Ladybird seen submerged in the harbour. The pride of Tobruk is Ladybird which was sunk in the harbour with only her gun turret above the water line. She still takes part in the defense of the Town. A Gun crew live aboard with their A.A. Gun with which they give a good account of themselves.” Taken by LT Smith, No. 1 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM E.4846

5 September 1941. Gunners of No 40 Battery, 14th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, cleaning a gun on board the half-submerged HMS Ladybird, which was sunk by enemy bombs in Tobruk Harbour. Photo by Thomas Fisher. AWM 020575

Same as the above, AWM 020574

These marooned Army gunners hung up their tin hats and spent their downtime fishing, playing cards, swimming, and reading between air raids. An almost idyllic life whenever bombs weren’t falling.

These images captured by Thomas Fisher, in the AWM:

After the 231-day siege of Tobruk was relieved by the British Eighth Army in late November and the front soon surged West, Ladybird was abandoned for good.

Ladybird’s motto was Ne sperne Fortuna (Do not throw away your luck). She well-earned two battle honors for her WWII service: Mediterranean 1940-41 and Libya 1940-41. She was hit by Japanese, Italian, and German munitions– the Axis trifecta.

Of the rest of her sisters, Cicala and Moth, still in the Far East in December 1941, were lost at Hong Kong. Just four Insects survived the war, Aphis, Cockchafer, Scarab, and Tarantula, all disposed of by 1949.

Epilogue

Ladybird’s watch bell is in the collection of the RMG, complete with the name of a infant baptized aboard her in 1936 while on China station.

A large builder’s model of her recently sold at auction.

Model of Ladybird, via Bonhams

Of Ladybird’s 12 skippers, only one, Capt. John Fenwick Warton, who commanded her in 1920 while on the Danube, went on to become an admiral. Her 12th, CDR Blackburn, survived her sinking in 1941 and would go on to command the sloop HMS Woodcock (U 90) later in the war. Blackburn earned both a DSO and Bar during the war and rejoined the retired list afterward, passing in 1978.

The West Lothian Royal Scots, who lived aboard Ladybird in her time with the Army, remained in North Africa through the rest of the campaign then landed at Salerno under the 12th AA Brigade and fought in Italy until January 1945, when they returned to Britain and disbandment.

As for the intrepid Australian war photographer who rode Ladybird into battle off Bardia and captured the moment in celluloid, Damien Parer journeyed west to the Pacific in 1942 and filmed “Kokoda Front Line,” one of the most iconic Australian war documentaries. While covering the faces of advancing Marines on Peleliu in September 1944, Parer, walking backwards behind the cover of a tank, was killed by a burst of Japanese machine gun fire, aged 32.

Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, the Japanese officer who ordered his guns to fire on the Panay rescue party, hitting Ladybird in the process, post-war was sentenced to life imprisonment in Sugamo Prison by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He died in 1957. The attack on Ladybird was cited both against him and Gen. Iwane Matsui, the overall Japanese commander during the Nanking campaign in 1937, during their war crimes trials. Matsui was hung for his crimes at Sugamo in 1948.

Ladybird is remembered in maritime art.

“Greyhound and Ladybird in search of enemy battery off Tobruk, like ill assorted terriers” between November 1942 and December 1942. Pictures of Paintings by LCDR R Langmaid, RN, Official Fleet Artist. These Pictures Are For Illustrating a Naval War Book by Paymaster Captain L a Da C Ritchie, RN. IWM A 13635

The Royal Navy recycled her name in 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War, by purchasing the 295-foot British-owned CNCo freighter MV Wusueh, which had been requisitioned for WWII service by the MoWT and only returned to her owners a couple years prior. Renamed HMS Ladybird, she was moored at Sasebo, Japan, as the Naval Headquarters and Communications vessel for the Commonwealth Blockading forces through 1953.

“HMS Ladybird, a British converted Yangtze River steamer. January 1951, Sasebo, Japan. HMS Ladybird was the nerve center of the British Commonwealth fleet in the Korean zone. It was the forward headquarters ship of Vice Admiral W. G. Andrewes, who commanded the fleet. It had communications equipment equal to that of a cruiser, and from her, the fueling, feeding, ammunitioning, and welfare of the fleet was administered.” IWM A 31830

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday 26 November 2025: A Sad Affray

Posted on November 26, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday 26 November 2025: A Sad Affray

Above we see HM Submarine Affray (P421).

One of a class of 16 British A (Amphion/Acheron) class boats designed for use in the Pacific against the Empire of Japan in the latter stages of WWII, she commissioned 80 years ago this week and, while she did not get to fire a torpedo in anger against the Imperial Japanese Navy, Affray did go on to leave a tragic mark on naval history.

The A-class boats

By 1943, the writing was on the wall at the Admiralty that the naval war would soon shift to the Pacific and would be very different than that in the European theatre. Whereas small subs were ideal for work in the cramped English Channel, North Sea, and Mediterranean, larger hulls, more akin to American “fleet boats,” would be needed for far-ranging Pacific service.

The answer was the A-class boats, Britain’s only full-sized subs designed during WWII, which offered faster surface speeds, improved habitability under tropical conditions (they were the first RN boats to have air conditioning), and a double-hull structure. They used all-welded pressure hulls and welded fuel tanks inside, with ballast tanks adapted for extra diesel storage. With their 280-foot length, they were only a little shorter than the typical 311-footers seen in U.S. service while still being much larger than the Royal Navy’s preceding 204-foot “Long hull” V-class submarines of the 1941–42 Programme. Even the RN’s vaunted T-class only ran 276 feet oal.

By comparison, the A boats could make 18.5 knots on the surface (with a 10,500nm range at 11) as compared to the 15.5 knots (8,000nm @ 10) of the T-class, and downright pokey 11.25 knots (3,000nm @ 9) of the V-class. The operating diving depth of the A-class was 350 feet (max 600), versus 300 on the riveted V and T classes.

The As were also heavily armed with 10 21-inch tubes: six at the bow (two external) and four (two external) at the stern. Besides the 10 loaded tubes, they could cram another 10 Mark VIII fish inside the pressure hull for reloads, although typically just six were carried. Instead of torpedoes, 18 1,700-pound Mark II/Type G ground mines could be carried and deployed. Deck guns included a QF 4″/40 Mk XXII in the sail, a 20mm Oerlikon, and up to three .303 Vickers guns. Sensors included a Type 267W air warning radar, which could function at periscope depth, as well as Types 138 and 152 sonars.

The 1943 Programme called for the construction of 46 Type A boats built across six yards: Vickers-Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness; Cammell Laird, Birkenhead; Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock; Chatham Dockyard, Plymouth Dockyard, and Vickers-Armstrongs, Walker-on-Tyne.

Only two of the 46, the Barrow-built HMS Amphion (P439) and HMS Astute (P447), were commissioned before the end of hostilities, in March and June 1945, respectively. Even at that, they never arrived in the Far East in time to conduct a war patrol, spending their wartime career in workup and tests.

The 14 sister boats– Acheron, Aeneas, Alaric, Alcide, Alderney, Alliance, Ambush, Anchorite, Andrew, Artemis, Artful, Auriga, Aurochs, and our Affray— were completed between late 1945 and April 1948.

HMS Alliance on sea trials, August 1946, off Barrow. Ref: CRTY 2017/139/776/1.

British Amphion-class submarine HMS Alcide (P415). Note her sail-mounted 4″/40 gun and original WWII profile. The photo was taken in 1947 at Plymouth Sound

Two more, the would-be Ace (P414) and Achates (P433), were not fitted out but, launched and afloat, were in turn converted into target boats.

The order for the remaining 28 units (Adept, Andromache, Answer, Antagonist, Antaeus, ANZAC, Aphrodite, Admirable, Approach, Arcadian, Ardent, Argosy, Atlantis, Agile, Asperity, Austere, Aggressor, Agate, Abelard, Acasta, Alcestis, Aladdin, Aztec, Adversary, Asgard, Awake, Astarte, and Assurance) was cancelled.

A-class submarines, 1946 Janes

Meet Affray

Our subject was laid down at the Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead on 16 January 1944, launched on 12 April of that year.

The future HM Submarine Affray after launching at the Cammel Laird ship yard, Birkenhead, 1944 LT CH Parnall, photographer. IWM A28195

Affray commissioned on 25 November 1945, and her first skipper was LCDR Ernest John Donaldson Turner DSO, DSC, RN, a submarine service steely regular who had commanded HMS Sibyl (P 217) for 17 war patrols in 1943-44 and had earned his DSO earlier in the war as XO of HMS L 23 (N 23).

Only two of Affray’s Cammell-built sisters, Aeneas and Alaric, would be completed.

Cold War service

Designed for the Pacific, Affray soon left to join the 4th Submarine Flotilla in Hong Kong, centered around the tender HMS Adamant (A164), and with her four sisters, HMS Amphion, Astute, Auriga, and Aurochs, replacing eight T-class boats that Adamant had been supporting since 1945.

By 1949, Affray and, along with the rest of her class, had received a 60-foot “Snort” device, based on captured late-war German snorkel designs, during regular overhauls back home.

HM Submarine Affray (P421), after her 1949 refit. Note the 4″/40 on her fairwater had been deleted, and she has a forward torpedo tube open.

The device overall proved successful. On 9 October 1947, Alliance dived off the Canary Islands to commence a 30-day “snort cruise,” covering 3,193 miles to Freetown, all while submerged. Andrew later made a 2,500nm run from Bermuda to the English Channel in 15 days.

Previously, British submarines could only spend a maximum of 48 hours submerged, and that was largely stationary.

.A class submarine HMS Aeneas off Gosport, circa late 1940s/early 1950s, sans 4″/40 and with her “Snort” fitted

However, Affray’s Snort reportedly leaked “like a sieve” during dives in the Med, and by January 195,1 the hard-used boat had been placed in reserve at Portsmouth, with the globe-trotter having logged more than 51,000nm in just her first five years of service.

Final Dive

Reactivated and under the command of experienced sub vet LT John Blackburn, DSC, in April 1951, Affray was detailed to participate in a detached simulated war exercise named “Training Spring.”

It would be a multi-day operation including “a war patrol, dummy attacks on shipping, combining with mock hostile aircraft attacks, Marine Commandos to be landed by cockle-type canoes for a simulated sabotage and enemy observation exercise, then re-embark.”

Instead of her regular crew, she had to land all but 24 experienced members while the boat was crowded with 24 ratings drawn from a new submarine class, a team of four Royal Marine Commando canoeists, and 22 members of a junior officer Executive and Engineering training class.

In all, 75 souls crammed into a boat built for 60~ with only about a third of them being “old salts.”

Affray had dived 30 miles South of the Isle of Wight, some 60 odd miles southwest of St Catherine’s Light, at 2115 on 16 April, and was due to transit to a position 20 miles southeast of Start Point. However, she failed to report her position on 17 April, and a SUBMISS/SUBSMASH alert stated search operations that eventually numbered over 50 ships, including 24 NATO warships.

These efforts continued fruitlessly until 19 April, with only an oil slick observed over Hurd’s Deep, by which point she was considered lost.

During the search, 161 sustained sonar contacts and as many as 70 uncharted wrecks, including another submarine, the 1944-lost U-269, were discovered, each requiring fruitlessly sending down a diver to verify if it was the lost Affray.

On 14 June, after two months, the frigate HMS Loch Fyne (K429) made the first contact with the wreck of Affray on her ASDIC equipment and sent the signal to the Admiralty in Whitehall.

The submarine rescue ship HMS Reclaim arrived on scene soon after and dropped a diver with a Siebe Gorman oxy-helium helmet to a depth of over 200 feet, who reported what could be a submarine below.

To confirm, Reclaim sent down her new underwater television apparatus on 16 June.

The camera container and lights in their frame, on board HMS Reclaim. IWM A 31970

When it neared the bottom at 260 feet, the first grainy image of the wreck, including the word “Affray” on a conning tower, appeared topside on Reclaim’s TV screen.

A picture of the name Affray on the side of the conning tower of the submarine, as documented by Reclaim’s camera rig. IWM (A 32110) Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205163026

There is no shortage of educated theories as to what happened to the submarine, the last British boat lost at sea. What is known is that her Snort mast was broken, and all hatches and hull seemed otherwise intact.

Hopefully, it was over quickly.

As noted by Submarinefamily.uk:

Her loss is still a matter of controversy, and the exact reason for her loss may never be known, as she is now protected as a grave for those who died in her. The most likely cause is that her snort mast broke off while she was at periscope depth and that the induction hull valve had failed to operate satisfactorily, resulting in water entering the submarine through a 10-inch hole. With her buoyancy destroyed, she would have sunk very quickly.

Epilogue

The 75 men lost on Affray have their names recorded in the Submariners’ Book of Remembrance in the chapel at HMS Dolphin, Gosport. Their names are also listed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, the Submarine Museum Memorial wall at Gosport, and Braye Harbour, Alderney, among others.

A dedicated website to H.M. Submarine Affray endures.

The four lost SBS men are also recorded in the Royal Marines Roll of Honour.

Of note, one of the divers from Reclaim working on Affray was LCDR Lionel “Buster” Crabb, OBE, GM, who later became famous when, in 1956, he disappeared in Portsmouth harbor during the visit of a Soviet cruiser with Khrushchev aboard.

The rest of Affray’s class had a happier and much longer service.

At least 10 of her sisters served at one time or another between 1954 and 1967 with the Royal Navy’s 6th Submarine Squadron out of HMC Dockyard, Halifax (stone frigate HMS Ambrose) as “clockwork mice” for ASW training with Canadian and NATO surface ships– with active service deployed North-East of the Grand Banks to warn if Soviet submarines were active during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although not in RCN service, they typically had several “Canucks” as part of their crews, which helped the RCN’s transition to the trio of new Canadian Oberon-class submarines, which began entering service in 1965. The Submarine Room at the Naval Museum of Halifax contains many of their relics, including at least one ship’s bell from HMS Aurochs.

Fourteen received a further modernization akin to the American GUPPY conversions, which removed the old sail and replaced it with a more modern fairwater, as well as a streamlined hull profile. Although their four external tubes and the deck guns were removed, they could still carry 18 more modern Mark 8 Mod 4 torpedoes or 26 1,930-pound Mark V/type Q magnetic/acoustic mines. They also received new sonars (Types 186 long-range passive, 187 medium-range search/attack, and 197 intercept). The big Type 187 attack sonar required a large bulbous dome on the bow, giving the updated Amphions a similar profile to the 1960s Oberon class boats.

When they finished their refit, the GUPPY-fied Amphions received updated S-series hull numbers in place of their old P-series numbers.

HMS Alliance (S67), almost unrecognizable after her modernization.

HMS Artful, Amphion-class submarine, S96

Ironically, despite the original deck guns being removed during modernization in the late 1950s, a very non-streamlined replacement 4″/33 Mark XXIII S gun was installed starting in 1960 on several A boats to counter blockade-running junks during the Indonesian Confrontation with the Singapore-based 7th Submarine Squadron.

Modernized Amphion-class submarine HMS Andrew (S63) leaving Singapore at the end of her service with 7th Submarine Squadron (7SM), in 1968. The crew lining the deck wearing broad terandak hats while a sign hanging from the side reads “Mama Sam’s”. Within two hours of departure, the crew rescued two Malaysian fishermen whose boat had sunk and returned them to Singapore. Andrew was one of the many submarines to leave Singapore in the late 1960s when the decision was made to repatriate all British military “East of Suez”. 7SM closed in 1971. IWM HU 129718

HMS Alliance, in camouflage pattern off Malaysia, 1965. IWM HU 129708

Aerial starboard-bow view of modernized Amphion-class submarine HMS Alliance (S67) seen in 1965 during her service with 7th Submarine Squadron, note her deck gun. She is wearing a camouflage paint scheme appropriate for operations in the shallow waters around Malaysia during the Indonesian Confrontation. IWM HU 129708

Jane’s page on the class, 1960.

The class made appearances in several films, with Andrew filling in for a U.S. nuclear submarine in the 1959 post-apocalyptic film On the Beach.

Sistership Artemis appeared in an RN training film entitled Voyage North, from which stock submarine footage was lifted and reused in movies and TV shows for decades.

Aeneas, however, one-upped her sisters by appearing in the classic Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967. She later went on to become an SSG, carrying an experimental mast-mounted SAM launcher.

The last of the class in service, HMS Andrew, paid off in May 1977 and was also the final British sub to carry a deck gun.

HMS Alliance, although decommissioned in 1973, would continue to serve as a static training boat until 1979, and survives today.

Alliance has been preserved since 1981 as a museum boat at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, Portsmouth.

HMS Alliance, Gosport

Among her relics is a replica wreath of daffodils, carnations, tulips, and lilies of the valley modeled after the one Alliance’s crew dropped over the resting place of Affray.

The Submarine HMS Alliance lays a wreath over the spot where submarine HMS Affray failed to surface during a training dive in 1951 (Manchester Mirror)

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

If you like this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

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