16 June 1940

HMS Grampus, the first of two Malta-based submarines lost in three days in June 1940, was sunk by Italian torpedo boats off Syracuse on 16 June. Grampus was a 2,200-ton minelayer, built at Chatham and commissioned on 10 March 1937. She began her active career on the China Station, then moved to the Mediterranean, arriving in Malta on 13 May 1940. She sailed from Malta on her second Med war patrol late in the evening of 10 June, and six days later was spotted in the early evening laying mines off Syracuse and Augusta in Sicily. Italian torpedo boat Circe, leading an anti-submarine patrol with sister boats Polluce, Calliope and Clio, saw Grampus’s fin and opened fire with 100mm and 20mm guns, closely followed by Clio. Grampus fired two torpedoes at Polluce then dived to escape, but saturation depth charging is thought to have caused the British submarine to sink with all 60 hands – there were reports of oil being spotted on the sea but no wreckage was found. The Italians marked the incident as a ‘probable’ sinking, and the Royal Navy officially recorded the boat as being lost on 24 June when she failed to return to base. The 1,900-ton O-class submarine HMS Orpheus sailed from Malta on 10 June 1940, the same day as Grampus, to take up her patrol off the coast of Libya. As with Grampus, the exact circumstances of her loss, along with the fate of her 54 sailors, are unknown, but it is though that she struck a mine off Benghazi late on 19 June, shortly after she sent her last signal. She was declared overdue on 27 June.

17 June 1871

Iron screwship HMS Megaera arrived at Ile Saint-Paul in the Indian Ocean on 17 June 1871 with her hull on the verge of falling apart. Megaera was one of the first iron ships to be built for the Royal Navy, and at 2,060 tons was one of the largest – and last – ships to be built by the William Fairbairn yard at Millwall, where she was launched on 22 May 1849. Although designed and built as a frigate, the Navy was still learning about the strengths and weaknesses of iron as a shipbuilding material, and as the ship entered service it was determined that the type of iron used would splinter under impact, putting her at a major disadvantage. Accordingly, all armament was removed from Megaera and four sisters, and instead of a frigate she saw service as a transport and troopship – though she was not much better in this new role, as she was ill-suited to carrying large numbers of personnel and was somewhat underpowered. She broke down on her maiden voyage in June 1851 and had to be towed back into port for repairs, and even when she was back in business her commander was instructed to use sails here possible to conserve coal. She served as a storeship during the Crimean War then resumed her mundane role as an auxiliary. On 22 February 1871 Megaera sailed from Britain on what would be her final voyage, carrying a party of nearly 70 sailors who were due to relieve the crews of two Royal Navy screw sloops in Australia. Her officer cadre were uneasy at her condition, as she appeared to be overloaded and sailing low in the water; almost immediately she ran into trouble in the shape of a winter storm, and had to call in at Queenstown in Ireland for repairs. She managed to sail on to Simons Town in South Africa, which she reached in May. Having resupplied, Megaera set out again on 28 May 1871, but on 8 June a leak was found to be slowly flooding her hold, which at first was managed by hand pumps and bailing out. A week or so later the ingress of water had become too much for the hand pumps, and more powerful steam pumps were brought into play which held their own, but the leakage cast doubts on the sense of continuing the passage to Australia. On 15 June her Commanding Officer, Capt Arthur Thrupp, ordered that she head for the nearest land to allow the ship to anchor and allow divers to examine her hull. The nearest land was Saint Paul Island, a small uninhabited volcanic island in the southern Indian Ocean, where she arrived on 17 June. After some difficulty in anchoring, divers went down to inspect the hull and found an iron plate which was so badly corroded there was a large hole in it, and the metal edges of the hole could be folded back by hand. Further examination showed that iron beams near the keel were also badly corroded and separating, more plates were found to be very thin, and the rusty iron that was flaking away were continuously blocking the pumps. With Australia still more than 1,800 miles distant and stormy weather brewing, Megaera’s Chief Engineer, George Mills, conferred with two colleagues (engineers who were in the relief party) and they advised Capt Thrupp that Megaera’s useful life was at an end. The following day Thrupp told his ship’s company they would need to move ashore, and on 19 June, with her anchorage increasingly unsafe in the high winds and seas, the ship was driven onto a sand bar at full speed. Over the following 11 days stores and equipment were brought ashore, after which the ship was officially abandoned as too dangerous to board. It was more than a fortnight before a passing Dutch ship spotted a flagpole the Megaera’s sailors had erected, and Lt Lewis Jones sailed with the merchantman to Java, arriving on 2 August and raising the alarm. Wooden screw sloop HMS Rinaldo was dispatched from Hong Kong to rescue the marooned sailors, but she was blown off course and took so long to arrive that Megaera’s crew had already been taken off by Dutch and British merchant ships. A court martial later that year exonerated Thrupp and his crew, accepting that the beaching and subsequent wreck was entirely justifiable, and the focus turned instead to the poor durability of the iron hull of the ship and the level of maintenance that put her sailors in such a dangerous position.

18 June 1806

Haulbowline naval establishment was set up by Order in Council at Queenstown in Ireland on 18 June 1806. Haulbowline Island, now the main base of the Irish Naval Service in a deep part of Cork Harbour, has been a military establishment since the start of the 17th Century when it was fortified to create a garrison for the British Army. The soldiers moved out in 1806, and part of the island was handed over to the Royal Navy, who established a base under an Order in Council on 18 June that same year. Over the next couple of decades the land was rapidly developed into a thriving naval base, with a defensive tower, storehouses, magazines, workshops and all the infrastructure required to support the yard. And the workers (and their families) who lived in a collection of houses and cottages. The island was also extended through land reclamation, and although the Navy closed the yard at the start of the 1830s they returned with a vengeance ten years later, and Haulbowline became a fully-established Royal Dockyard in the 1860s, both building and repairing warships. More land was reclaimed, virtually doubling the size of the island, and at its peak it had a large central basin, a dry dock, a victualling yard, a fuel depot and a small Naval hospital in a converted storehouse. The facility was handed over to the newly-established Irish Free State in March 1923.

19 June 1940

Armed trawler HMT Moonstone captured Italian submarine Galileo Galilei off Aden on 19 June 1940. The submarine later became X2, then P711, and hence numbering of British X-craft began with X3. Moonstone began life as the 615-ton Lady Madeline, launched by Cook, Welton and Gemmell on the River Hull on 31 July 1934, and she was operated by Jutland Amalgamated Trawlers of Hull until war broke out. Requisitioned by the Admiralty, she was converted for anti-submarine operations and renamed HMS Moonstone. The armed trawler was almost immediately sent to the Mediterranean where she worked as part of the 4th A/S Patrol Group. On 16 June 1940 Moonstone rescued the crew of a Norwegian tanker that had been sunk by Italian submarine Galileo Galilei south of Aden earlier that day, and the submarine was spotted two days later. Galileo Galilei was launched at Taranto just four months before Moonstone, but was a more seasoned warship, having participated covertly in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-8. The Italian boat had left her Red Sea base of Massawa on 10 June on what turned out to be her final patrol under the Italian Ensign, and the destruction of the Norwegian tanker prompted a response from the Allies. Moonstone was sent to find her, and first contact was made on 18 June when the submarine challenged a Yugoslav freighter with a shot across the bow. Moonstone was near enough to hear the gunfire and rapidly closed in. Galileo Galilei dived but stayed in the area as the appearance of the little trawler did not seem a particularly aggressive response to the submarine’s activities. An intense depth-charge attack by Moonstone appeared to do little damage, though while the submarine lay on the sea bed the first signs of toxic fume poisoning became apparent. Moonstone picked up the enemy boat on her ASDIC again on 19 June and dropped two depth charges. The Italian captain, Capt Corrado Nardi, weighed up his options and fancied his chances on the surface against the trawler. The submarine surfaced and her two 100mm guns were manned, but the sights on one were faulty, and this inaccuracy, along with Moonstone’s agility, caused the Italian gunners a good deal of trouble. Shots were exchanged for around ten minutes before Moonstone’s 4in gun hit the submarine’s bridge, killing several men and wounding Capt Nardi. Another shot killed the crew of the bow gun, the aft gun jammed, and Moonstone then hit the bridge again, killing the remaining sailors there including Nardi. At this point destroyer HMS Kandahar arrived on the scene, and with a quarter of her crew dead the most senior officer left on board Galileo Galilei – a humble ensign – surrendered the vessel, which was towed to Aden by Kandahar. and was secured by Moonstone. The submarine was later taken in tow by destroyer HMS Kandahar and delivered to Aden. Moonstone suffered no casualties in the encounter, and the action won a DSC and DSM for members of her crew. The trawler survived the war and returned to fishing duties as Red Lancer until she was scrapped in 1964. Galileo Galilei also continued her war service, but this time on British books. She spent several months at Port Said as a generator, charging submarine batteries, and was then commissioned in June 1942 as HMS X2, later changed to HMS P711, operating as a training boat east of Suez. She was scrapped in January 1946.

20 June 1940

Destroyer HMS Beagle landed a demolition party at Bordeaux on 20 June 1940 as part of the evacuation of St Nazaire. The 1,820-ton B-class destroyer, completed on 9 April 1931 by John Brown on Clydebank, was very active during World War 2, usually on escort and patrol duties, and took part in the Norwegian Campaign of 1940, Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa in 1942, the Battle of the Atlantic, Arctic Convoys and the Normandy Landings. She also took the official German surrender in the Channel Islands in May 1945. However, in June 1940 she was helping to cover the evacuation of both British troops and civilians from western France in the face of German advances, known as Operation Aerial. On 17 June Beagle was instrumental in saving hundreds of lives from the sunken Anchor Line liner-turned-troopship HMT Lancastria. The liner had been tasked with embarking as many people as possible from St Nazaire, and estimates of the final total on board vary between 4,000 and 9,000, with one loading officer estimating the figure to be at least 7,200 – mainly fighting men, but including Embassy staff and industrial workers. Her departure was delayed by an air raid, which proved a fatal move; just before 1600 on 17 June she was struck by at least three German bombs, one of which was reported to have gone straight down a funnel and exploded in the bowels of the ship. She sank within 20 minutes, and many died from drowning, hypothermia or being trapped in the holds, and it was said there were numerous broken necks caused by the lifejackets when men jumped from height into the water. With the ship heavily overloaded there were nowhere near enough lifeboats or lifejackets, and although the death toll will never be known for sure, it is thought to be between 4,000 and 6,500. There were almost 2,500 survivors, with the armed trawler HMT Cambridgeshire picking up 900 of them, while HMS Beagle rescued another 600. Having disembarked the shipwrecked troops and sailors at Plymouth on 18 June, Beagle returned to the fray the following day, and on 20 June she started to land demolition parties to destroy infrastructure at Bordeaux and La Pallice, rendering it useless for German occupiers. She was also involved in flurries of diplomatic activity until she returned to Plymouth on 25 June. Beagle’s active career ended with the war in Europe. Just 15 days after she took the German surrender in St Peter Port she was placed in reserve, and the destroyer was scrapped in January 1946.

21 June 1898

Battleship HMS Albion was launched on the Thames on 21 June 1898 in a botched operation that ended up killing dozens of onlookers. The pre-dreadnought battleship was ordered in 1896 as part of Canopus class, slightly smaller and faster than the preceding Majestic class and intended for service in the Far East. Displacing 14,500 tons, Albion was laid down on 3 December 1896 by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Co of Leamouth, in London, at the mouth of the Bow Creek near Canning Town – a rather narrow part of the channel. Her launch, on 21 June 1898, should have been a day of celebration. Mary of Teck, the Duchess of York, was the dignitary given the honour of christening the ship, and thousands of people crowded into vantage points around the yard to watch Albion glide into the Thames. Also on hand were film pioneers Robert Paul and E P Prestwich, who were there to capture the occasion for posterity. What they captured was one of the first disasters ever filmed. As the warship slid down the slipway she created a powerful wave which swamped a temporary stand on the bank of a side creek, causing it to collapse into the river. Small boats swarmed around plucking Londoners from the river, but by the time the rescue effort was over it is estimated that 34 people, mainly women and children, lost their lives in the accident. There was much debate at the time as to whether the film should be made public, but it was, and the launch and its aftermath can be found on YouTube. Albion was not completed until June 1901 because of a shortage of machinery, and on commissioning on 25 June 1901 she sailed straight to join the China Station, where she served for four years. Further spells with the Home Fleet and Atlantic Fleet, and spells in reserve, saw her through to the outbreak of war, when she joined the Channel Fleet and acted as flagship before moving on to the Cape Verde and Canary Islands Station and the Cape of Good Hope Station. In January 1915 she joined the Dardanelles Campaign, including the bombardment of Turkish forts in failed attempts to force the narrows and support for the landings at Gallipoli. She also helped blockade Bulgaria and Greece before taking over as guardship at Queenstown in Ireland in April 1916. After a move to the Humber in August the same year she was converted to an accommodation ship shortly before the Armistice, and in 1919 was put up for disposal. She was scrapped at Morecambe the following year.

22 June 1841

First rate HMS Trafalgar was launched in the presence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert by Horatio Nelson’s niece Lady Bridport on 22 June 1841, using a bottle of wine which had been on board HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. The massive ship, mounting 120 guns, attracted a vast crowd, estimated at half a-million people, to Woolwich Dockyard and the surrounding are to watch her launch; it is reported that 500 people were on the hip itself when it went into the water, around 100 of whom had been present at Trafalgar 36 years before. She represented the ultimate in wooden sailing warships, and was a powerful statement, but she was also doomed to be sidelined early on in her career by the development of iron ships and steam propulsion. Trafalgar saw action once, during the Crimean War at the bombardment of Sevastopol on 17 October 1854, but otherwise benefited from the relative calm of Pax Britannica, when the Royal Navy helped keep the peace on a global scale as it served the extensive British Empire. Trafalgar was fitted with screw machinery and propulsion in 1859, and in 1873 was converted for use as a training ship at Portland, taking the name HMS Boscawen. She was sold by the Admiralty in 1906.