HMS Beverley (H64)
Postcard photograph of WW2 destroyer HMS Beverley
.JPG)
HMS Beverley was a British Naval destroyer between October 1940 (when it was acquired from the United States) and April 1943 when it was sunk by U-Boat torpedoes. Only four out of a crew of 155 were saved.
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posted by ritsonvaljos at 7:07 pm
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Additional information about H.M.S. Beverley
The Second World War Royal Navy vessel H.M.S. Beverley was a destroyer and the adopted vessel of the town of Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire. It was built in the United States and launched at Newport News as USS Branch DD-197 on 19 April 1919. She served with the US Atlantic Fleet for about 3 years and then decommissioned and moth-balled at Philadelphia for 17 years. With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 the USS Branch was re-commissioned and undertook neutrality patrols along the east coast of the United States.
In October 1940, with the United States still officially neutral, the vessel was decommissioned from the United States Navy and became H.M.S. Beverley in the Royal Navy. According to the wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill the one battle Britain could not afford to lose was the Battle of Atlantic. The Merchant vessels supplying the British war effort had to be protected.
H.M.S. Beverley was one of the vessels employed to protect the Atlantic and Russian convoys. Towards the end of 1942 Germany had more than 200 U-Boats hunting for the Atlantic convoys. So there was every chance of a convoy coming under attack.
On 4 February 1943 H.M.S. Beverley and H.M.S. Vimy managed to sink the U-187. Between them Beverley and Vimy picked up 45 survivors of the German U-Boat. Two months later, on 9 April 1943, H.M.S. Beverley was escorting convoy ON-176 when it was damaged in a collision with SS Cairnvalona, which included the loss of key anti-submarine equipment.
Early on the morning of 11 April 1943 U-188 sighted the convoy about 530 miles south of Greenland. H.M.S. Beverley, by now at the rear of the convoy, was hit by three torpedoes and was lost. Out of a crew of 155 only four survived. Telegrams would have been sent out to the families of the missing crewmen firstly telling them their kinsman was 'missing' and secondly - unless he had subsequently turned up on another vessel - that he had been 'missing presumed killed'.
Acknowledgements:
Mr M.W. Pocock and his website:
www.maritimequest.com
(background information about HMS Beverley)
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