HMS Broke: The Destroyer That Rammed Algiers' Harbour Boom Under Fire

A Great War Design, Commissioned Years Late

HMS Broke was built by J. I. Thornycroft at Woolston, her keel laid in October 1918 as the First World War drew to a close, launched on 16 September 1920, but not commissioned until 15 April 1925, a truly long gestation reflecting the postwar slowdown in naval construction and the reduced urgency once the war she had been designed for was over.

A Thornycroft-type, or Shakespeare-class, flotilla leader, she displaced 1,554 tons standard and up to 2,009 tons at full load, armed with five 4.7-inch guns, a 3-inch anti-aircraft gun, two 2-pounder pom-poms and two triple 21-inch torpedo tube mounts, driven by Brown-Curtis steam turbines producing 40,000 shaft horsepower for a design speed of 36.5 knots, a notably fast and powerful ship for her era.

She spent her early career as a Mediterranean flotilla leader between 1925 and 1931.

Convoys, Dunkirk-Style Evacuation, and Rescue at Sea

HMS Broke returned to active war service on convoy escort duties from 1939, first under Captain Ralph Kerr and, from 27 September that year, under Commander Bryan Scurfield, and took part in Operation Cycle, the evacuation of Allied troops from Normandy in June 1940 following the fall of France.

That summer she also picked up survivors from two separate torpedoed merchantmen within a day of each other, fifteen from the Estonian steamer Vapper on 7 July and twenty from the Swedish Bissen on 8 July, and in October 1940 took part in Operation Medium, a Royal Navy bombardment of Cherbourg. She was later converted to a short-range escort, trading some of her 4.7-inch guns for extra anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons better suited to the daily grind of convoy escort than to the fleet action she would now never fight.

The Comorin rescue came in April 1941, still under Scurfield's command, when the armed merchant cruiser caught fire and had to be abandoned; Broke was one of three ships, alongside HMS Glenartney and HMS Lincoln, that pulled her survivors from the sea.

Command passed to Commander Walter Couchman that July, and then, in April 1942, to Lieutenant Commander Arthur Layard, who would remain in charge of HMS Broke for the rest of her career. It was Layard who took her into the defence of Convoy SC 94 in August 1942, one of the many hard-fought Battle of the Atlantic convoy actions that defined the middle years of the war, work that, whatever its lower profile compared to her final action, kept HMS Broke and her crew in the thick of the fighting for years before her most dramatic moment arrived.

Smashing the Boom at Algiers

HMS Broke's defining moment came on 8 November 1942, when she and the destroyer HMS Malcolm took part in Operation Terminal, part of the wider Operation Torch landings in North Africa. Captain Henry Fancourt, commanding the two-ship flotilla, was embarked aboard Broke for the operation, while Layard remained in command of the ship herself, the two men sharing her bridge for what would prove HMS Broke's last and greatest action.

Their mission was to land 600 American troops of the 3rd Battalion, 135th Infantry, part of the US 34th Infantry Division under Colonel Edwin Swenson, directly onto the port at Algiers to seize its facilities before Vichy French forces could destroy them, but the defenders opened fire the moment the two ships approached.

HMS Malcolm took a shell that killed ten of her crew, knocked out three of her four boilers and cut her speed to four knots, forcing her to retreat and play no further part in the action. HMS Broke pressed on, and on her third attempt sliced clean through the harbour boom, successfully landing her troops under fire on the Quai de Fécamp some four hours after the operation had begun, a remarkable feat of seamanship and determination carried out under sustained hostile fire.

A Costly Success

Ashore, Swenson's men held their ground for hours against a garrison many times their number, but with no prospect of reinforcement and Vichy tanks closing in, they were eventually surrounded and forced to surrender, having lost five killed and eight wounded. HMS Broke, meanwhile, having landed them, continued to take heavy fire from Vichy shore batteries and was forced to withdraw at 10:30, sustaining further damage on top of the wounds she had already taken forcing the boom.

She was taken in tow by the destroyer HMS Zetland, but the damage proved too severe, and HMS Broke sank two days later, on 10 November 1942, her loss coming almost as an afterthought to the genuine tactical success she had achieved in getting her troops ashore against defended opposition where her companion ship, a destroyer leader of an older class entirely, had been unable to.

HMS Broke's career, spanning from a First World War design to a Second World War death, stands as a striking example of how thoroughly the Royal Navy relied on its interwar-built destroyers right through to the very end of the conflict.