HMS Boreas (H77): Twenty-One Dead in a Stuka Attack, Then a Second Life as Greek Warship Salamis

A Destroyer for the Mediterranean Fleet

HMS Boreas was built by Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company at Jarrow, her keel laid on 22 July 1929, launched on 11 June 1930, and commissioned on 20 February 1931. A B-class destroyer displacing 1,360 tons standard and up to 1,790 tons at deep load, she carried four 4.7-inch guns in single mounts, two 40mm 2-pounder anti-aircraft guns and two quadruple 21-inch torpedo tube mounts, along with depth charge equipment later expanded from 20 to 35 charges as the anti-submarine war intensified. HMS Boreas joined the Mediterranean Fleet on completion and served there through the mid-1930s.

Patrolling Spain's Civil War

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, HMS Boreas was employed evacuating civilians from the conflict zone, before spending 1937 and 1938 on patrol off the Spanish coast as part of Britain's non-intervention policy, monitoring the fighting between Nationalist and Republican forces without formally taking sides. On 6 March 1938, HMS Boreas and HMS Kempenfelt rescued survivors of the Spanish Nationalist heavy cruiser Baleares after she was torpedoed off Cartagena, a genuine act of humanitarian rescue carried out in the middle of someone else's war, exactly the kind of unglamorous but valuable service that non-intervention patrol work regularly demanded of British destroyers.

A Devastating Afternoon off Dover

HMS Boreas's war took a grievous turn on 25 July 1940, when she engaged German E-boats near Dover Harbour alongside her sister ship HMS Brilliant. As the two destroyers withdrew, they came under a devastating attack from German Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, and HMS Boreas's bridge took two direct hits, killing one officer and twenty of her crew in a single, terrible afternoon. She spent from that summer until 23 January 1941 under repair at Millwall Dock, a lengthy convalescence made even longer when bomb splinter damage struck the ship again on 19 January 1941 while repairs were still under way, a grim reminder of just how exposed British ships and dockyards remained to German air power during the Battle of Britain and its aftermath.

A Second Flag, and the War's Final Year

HMS Boreas was transferred to the Royal Hellenic Navy on 10 February 1944 and recommissioned as HHMS Salamis on 25 March that year, part of the wider Allied effort to rebuild and re-equip Greece's navy after the country's occupation. Following working-up damage that required further repairs at Hull between 28 April and 13 June 1944, she served as an escort vessel out of Gibraltar before moving to the Aegean that October to join the 12th Greek Destroyer Flotilla, seeing out the final months of the war supporting operations to liberate Greek waters from German occupation, the ship that had once flown the White Ensign now doing much the same job under Greek colours.

Returned, and Scrapped

Salamis, the former HMS Boreas, continued in Greek service as a training ship after the war before being returned to British control at Malta on 9 October 1951. She was towed to Rosyth, arriving on 15 April 1952 to be broken up by Metal Industries Limited, bringing to a close a career that had carried her from rescuing Spanish sailors to surviving a devastating Stuka attack and finally into a second, entirely different national service under the flag of an ally.