HMS Arabis (K385): The Corvette Built for Britain and Sent Straight to New Zealand

Built on the Clyde, Bound for the Pacific

HMS Arabis was a modified Flower-class corvette built by George Brown and Company at Greenock on the Clyde, laid down on 26 February 1943 and launched on 28 October that year. Rather than joining the Royal Navy's home fleet, she was earmarked for New Zealand from the outset and commissioned directly into the Royal New Zealand Navy on 22 February 1944 under Lieutenant Commander J.H. Steelye, becoming HMNZS Arabis while still carrying her British-allocated pennant number, K385. She displaced 980 tons standard, carried a single 4-inch gun, eight 20mm anti-aircraft cannon, a Hedgehog anti-submarine mortar and 72 depth charges, a solid, unglamorous fit typical of the class.

After completing her work-up by 27 April 1944, she reached Devonport, New Zealand's naval base at Auckland, on 15 August that year for further refitting ahead of active service.

Minesweeping the Solomons

Arabis departed for the Solomon Islands on 26 November 1944, arriving at Renard Sound on 14 December, and two days later replaced HMNZS Matai as Senior Officer of the 25th Minesweeping Flotilla, based in the Solomons. She remained on this duty into the spring of 1945, with a detachment of her operations extending as far as Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, part of the extensive, methodical, and largely unglamorous work of clearing safe passages through waters that had seen heavy fighting between Allied and Japanese forces.

A Quiet Return Home

She returned to Auckland in June 1945 and, once the war had ended, settled into a considerably gentler routine, undertaking goodwill cruises and minesweeping exercises in the Hauraki Gulf between March and June 1946, as well as two escort missions to Nouméa in July 1945 alongside HMNZS Tui, helping bring Fairmile motor launches home. She was paid off into reserve on 25 July 1946, though she was briefly recommissioned in February 1948 for Waitangi Day ceremonies, a fittingly ceremonial final duty for a ship that had spent her working life quietly making Pacific waters safer for everyone else.

A Long Voyage to the Scrapyard

Arabis left New Zealand for the last time on 16 April 1948 and was formally decommissioned that year, before being sold for scrap and broken up by T.W. Ward at Grays, near Tilbury, in August 1951, bringing her back, in pieces, to within a few dozen miles of the Thames Estuary and not so very far from where her voyage to the other side of the world had effectively begun.