23 May 1822

HMS Comet, the first paddle steamer built for the Royal Navy, was launched at Deptford on 23 May 1822. Built by Boulton, Watt and Co at Deptford on the Thames, she was ordered as a steam tug to tow Naval ships on the Rivers Thames and Medway when the wind was too light As well as side paddles, Comet was built with a two-mast schooner rig. Although she entered service later in 1922 she did not go onto the Royal Navy’s books until 1831. She continued to serve the nation until December 868, when she was declared surplus to requirements and broken up the following year at Portsmouth Dockyard.

24 May 1916

HMS E18 was reportedly sunk by a German ‘submarine trap’ (Q-ship) off Bornholm in the Baltic on 24 May 1916, though there is some evidence that the submarine may have been operating after this date. The 805-ton boat, launched in March 1915, was only in service for just over a year, but managed to contribute plenty to the war effort. After her first patrol in the North Sea E18 was sent to the Baltic, leaving Harwich on 28 August 1915 and travelling with HMS E19 via Newcastle, arriving at Reval (now Tallinn, in Estonia) on 13 September – though the passage nearly finished her off; she narrowly avoided two German destroyers by diving and porpoising between the shallow seabed (seven metres down) and the surface for three hours, then after pausing in deeper water she surfaced near a cruiser and her escort destroyers, which hunted her for some time. With batteries low, E18 continued her passage, only to be attacked by two more destroyers, one of which nearly rammed her. She managed four patrols in the latter part of 1915, on two occasions almost firing on major German warships but circumstances (a Russian submarine which disturbed the target, then a jammed torpedo bow cap) prevented her firing. Her first patrol of 1916 was also problematic. As soon as she left, on 6 January, the patrol was cancelled, but too late for E18 to be recalled. On her return leg, storms and sub-zero temperatures at one point prevented her conning tower hatch from closing, and she became icebound – she could only return to base with the help of a Finnish icebreaker. The British boats in Reval were iced in until the end of March, and E18 was the first submarine back at sea, resuming her patrol programme on 28 April. She left for her final patrol in late May – some records indicate she was at sea and possibly sunk by the German Q-ship Kronprinz Wilhelm (known as Schiff K) on 24 May, though that could have been the result of a confusing interaction between Ship K and two Russian submarines at that time, though it is by no means sure that E18 was in the area at the time. Other historians believe E18 was responsible for badly damaging German destroyer V100 on 26 May and that she was possibly sighted by German forces on 28 May and 1 June. In this scenario she would have been lost in early June on her way back to Reval, possibly by striking a mine; in any case nothing further was heard from her and she was officially declared lost by the Royal Navy on 11 June. Her wreck was discovered off the coast of Estonia, and images taken of the wreck by a Swedish remotely-operated submersible show that E18’s hatch was open, indicating that she was probably sailing on the surface when she struck the mine.

25 May 1941

Sloop HMS Grimsby was sunk by German aircraft 40 miles north of Tobruk on 25 May 1941. The ship, one of eight vessels in her class built for the Royal Navy, was launched at Devonport Dockyard on 19 July 1933 and commissioned on 17 May the following year. Designed as 1,500-ton specialist escort ships, they were equipped with two 4.7in guns, a quickfire 3in AA gun and four 3pdr saluting guns, were capable of over 16kts and had a complement of 100. Grimsby was based in Hong Kong before World War 2, carrying out anti-piracy patrols along the Chinese coast, but on the outbreak of hostilities she returned to the UK, joining the Rosyth Escort Force to protect convoys through the North Sea. In May 1940 she switched to the Red Sea Escort Force and shuttled between Aden and Suez for a year. In March the sloop was on the move again, this time escorting convoys in the Mediterranean and playing a role in Operation Demon, the evacuation of Greek and British Commonwealth troops from mainland Greece as the Germans invaded in April. On 25 May 1941 Grimsby and armed trawler Southern Main were escorting the tanker Helka into the besieged port of Tobruk. The customary air cover from the RAF was not in place that day, and the three ships were attacked by a formation of Italian Junkers Ju 87 ‘Stuka’ dive bombers. The tanker was sunk, and Grimsby damaged, to the extent that she was unable to fend off a second air attack and was sunk later in the day with the loss of 11 men. One of Grimsby’s sister ships, HMS Wellington, has been preserved, and is currently moored on Victoria Embankment in central London – for more information see https://www. thewellingtontrust.org.

26 May 1918

Auxiliary patrol yacht Lorna, a venerable vessel built in 1904 and taken up by the Admiralty in both world wars, sank UB-74 in Lyme Bay on 26 May 1918. The vessel was ordered by the son of a textiles magnate and built in 1904 by Scotts at Greenock under the name Beryl, but the intended owner died before she was finished, and it was bought in 1905 by a member of the aristocracy, and in 1911 by a former Governor of the Bank of England, when it was given the name Lorna. The 485-ton steam yacht was requisitioned by the Admiralty in August 1914 and converted to an armed patrol vessel, mounting two 6pdr guns and a number of depth charges. She served in both home waters and the Mediterranean, and on the evening of 26 May was escorting a convoy off Portland Bill when her crew spotted a submarine periscope just 30m away. Having spotted the yacht late, the submarine – UB-74 – dived but was depth charged, and a patch of debris and turbulent water was spotted on the surface shortly after. On returning to the spot Lorna’s crew spotted four German sailors in the water but by then a further depth charge had been dropped and the explosion killed three of the survivors outright while the fourth died later that evening. Lorna was returned to her civilian owner in February 1919, and later sold to an MP. She was taken up once again in September 1939, initially serving out of Fort William and later moving to the Mediterranean based at Gibraltar. She was excused further military service in 1943, and in 1947 was sold to a Greek shipping concern, which converted her to carry passengers under the name Thessalia. She was refitted with a diesel engine in 1960 and renamed Glaros, and sank after a collision in Piraeus on 14 December 1966. Although the wreck was raised she was of no further use, and was scrapped nearby in 1968.

27 May 1942

Survey vessel HMS Fitzroy was sunk by a mine off Great Yarmouth on 27 May 1942 with the loss of 12 men. The 720-ton ship, part of the Aberdare sub-class of Hunt-class minesweepers, was completed in 1919 and commissioned on 1 July that year as a survey vessel, spending the inter-war period surveying home waters from Shetland to Portsmouth. Powered by forced draught pulverised coal-fired boilers, the ships of this class required high-quality Welsh coal to operate effectively, and produced a lot of smoke, being known as ‘Smoky Joes’. Fitzroy had two earlier names – Pinner and Portreath – before the Royal Navy settled on the appropriately survey-related name Fitzroy. She was converted for minesweeping work at the start of World War 2, but met her end when she struck a mine some 40 miles off Great Yarmouth in the North Sea on 27 May 1942 – it is thought most likely that the device she struck was a British mine.

28 May 1891

Converted tugboat HMS Hearty sailed from Kinsale in southern Ireland on her first fishery protection patrol on 28 May 1891 – regarded by some as the first Royal Navy ship fully dedicated to that task. Previous ships with the long-established Fishery Protection Squadron – one of the oldest military formations in the world – had always been general-purpose warships allocated on an ad hoc basis, and included frigate HMS Albermarle, commanded by Capt Horatio Nelson, in 1781 off the American East Coast. Having said that, Hearty did have a wider remit than simply fishery protection work. She was built as the tug Indra at the Thompson shipyard in Dundee, but by the time she was launched in 1885 she had been bought by the Royal Navy; she was renamed Hearty at the end of that year. Hearty was commissioned in September 1886 to serve as a Special Service Vessel on fishery protection patrols in the North Sea, as well as a tug, and she later undertook harbour duties at Chatham and Sheerness. In 1908 she was employed as a target-towing vessel in the Moray Firth, where elements of the Nore division of the Home Fleet were able to carry out battle practice. Hearty was recommissioned as a survey ship in 1910, carrying out tidal surveys of the deeper areas of the English Channel and the North Sea from her base at Dover; her survey work carried on throughout World War 1 while she was based at the Nore. Hearty was sold as a salvage vessel to a commercial firm in late 1920 and continued to work under the name Dalhousie until she was scrapped in the 1930s.

29 May 1877

HM Ships Shah and Amethyst, under Rear Admiral de Horsey, fought Peruvian rebel ship Huascar off Ilo on 29 May 1877, during which Shah fired the first British torpedo used in action. Built at Portsmouth Dockyard and launched on 10 September 1873, the 6,350-ton unarmoured steam frigate Shah was deployed to the Pacific Station as flagship in 1876. The following year, on 29 May, in company with the corvette HMS Amethyst, Shah fought an action against the armoured turret ship Huescar, operated by anti-government rebels, near the port of Ilo in Peru. Huescar had been taken from the Peruvian government’s hands on 6 May 1877 and was being used by rebels to harass commercial shipping along the Peruvian coast. When she boarded a number of British merchant ships, enough was enough, and Shah and Amethyst were sent along to knock the Peruvian ship out of the picture. In the battle, the Royal Navy ships fired at a much quicker rate than the Peruvian – Shah managed almost 240 shots and the smaller, shallow-draught Amethyst almost 200, while Huescar only managed to fire off 40 rounds, most of them off-target and only doing superficial damage to the rigging. However, shots from both Amethyst and Shah (60 of which struck the Peruvian) had very little effect against the monitor’s armour. An attempt to ram Huescar also failed, as did the first attack by a self-propelled torpedo in the history of the Royal Navy – the device had only just been introduced to the front line, and in any case it missed. Although Huescar managed to escape under cover of darkness, the1,900-ton armoured monitor was surrendered to the Peruvian government the following day after less than a month in the control of the rebels. She went on to serve in the Chilean Navy, and is now preserved in the Chilean port of Talcahuano. Shah continued to serve in the Royal Navy, playing a small part in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and taking up the role of accommodation ship in the Naval Dockyard at Ireland Island in Bermuda. In late 1904 she was converted to a coal storage hulk named C740, and she was eventually sold in the autumn of 1919, ending her days when she was wrecked in a hurricane in Bermuda in 1926. Amethyst underwent a major refit in England at the end of the 1870s then returned to South America until she was paid off at the end of 1885. She was scrapped two years later.

30 May 1942

Battleship HMS Ramillies was badly damaged and tanker British Loyalty sunk by Japanese midget submarine at Diego Suarez on 30 May 1942. The 31,600-ton battleship had an inauspicious start to life, damaging her hull and rudders at her launch at Dalmuir on 12 September 1916 – she had to be patched up before she could be towed to a sufficiently large dry dock (in Liverpool) where she could undergo repairs. When they were finished, in May 1917, she ran aground as she left the Cammell Laird yard and headed out onto the Mersey, requiring further repairs. Ramillies served with both the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets in the 1920s and 30s, and undertook a training role in 1936-7 before undergoing a refit that took her through to 1939. She began hostilities in the Mediterranean, based at Alexandria, then moved to Aden before undertaking a passage to New Zealand via Australia in order to escort troop convoys between the Antipodes and Aden. With the entry of Italy into the war Ramillies was put onto convoy escort work in the Med, and later in 1941 she was switched to the Indian Ocean, although as she and her sisters were somewhat outdated she was kept away from combat operations and continued to escort convoys. She was the Royal Navy flagship for Operation Ironclad, the invasion of Madagascar, in early May 1942 and continued to support Allied forces during the subsequent land operations. On 30 May the midget submarine M-20b, launched from Japanese submarine I-20, attacked Allied shipping in Diego Suarez (now Antsiranana) in northern Madagascar, with one torpedo blowing a gaping hole in the hull of the battleship (though causing no deaths) and another sinking the 7.000-ton motor tanker British Loyalty, killing six sailors. Badly damaged, Ramillies managed to limp to Durban in South Africa where, despite her 26 years, she was found to be in generally excellent condition (apart from the hole in her hull), so she continued on her way to Devonport where full repairs were carried out. A further brief spell on the Eastern Fleet was followed by a refit, after which Ramillies joined the bombardment force for the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, successfully knocking out the German shore battery at Benerville-sur-Mer, on the fringe of Sword Beach. Over the course of a week Ramillies fired more than 1,000 shells from her 15in main guns at targets around Sword, Gold and Juno beaches, requiring her worn-out guns to be replaced in Portsmouth later that month. She repeated her feat of accurate bombardment in August 1944 during Operation Dragoon, the landings at Provence in Southern France, when she knocked out a succession of batteries from St Tropez to Toulon. With the bombardment role no longer in such demand, Ramillies was reduced to reserve status in January 1945 and converted to a barrack ship after VE Day. In late 947 she was deemed surplus to requirements and sold for scrap in February 1948, finally being broken up at Cairnryan in Scotland in April. One of the battleship’s main 15in guns can still be seen outside the Imperial War Museum in London; the gun was on board Ramillies between 1916 and 1941 when it was removed and placed in storage. The tanker British Loyalty was refloated in December 1942 and towed to the Addu Atoll in the Maldives in October the following year where she was used as an oil storage hulk. The tanker had to misfortune to be attacked for a second time on 9 March 1944 when she was struck by a torpedo from German submarine U-183. Although the torpedo did significant damage, counterflooding prevented the tanker from sinking, and she was repaired and continued to serve as a hulk until she was scuttled on 15 January 1946.

31 May 1946

RNAS Wingfield was handed over to South Africa Civil Aviation on 1 May 1946, and for a period it became Cape Town Airport. The land was sold to the South African government by a local businessman/politician on the outbreak of war in 1939 for use as an airfield, on condition it would be returned to him when it had no further use. Wingfield Aerodrome saw its first military formation arrive shortly after in the shape of 15 Squadron SAAF, which comprised three former Junkers Ju 86 airliners that were converted for use as maritime patrol aircraft. The Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm used the airfield from July 1942, originally as a disembarkation facility and for working up squadrons and later as a repair yard. It saw a wide range of squadrons and aircraft on its runways. Including 799 NAS’s Albacores, 804 NAS’s Hellcats, 810 NAS’s Barracudas and 818 NAS’s Swordfish. The airfield was handed back to the South Africans in May 1946, and served as Cape Town’s primary airport until a new Cape Town International Airport was opened in 1954. That facility is now the second busiest airport in South Africa, and the fourth busiest on the entire continent.