HMS Clover (K134): Finding Only Four Survivors From a Destroyer's 155 Crew

HMS Clover (K134)

Built at Paisley

HMS Clover was built by Fleming and Ferguson at Paisley, ordered on 25 July 1939, laid down on 29 July 1940, launched on 30 January 1941, and commissioned that May, a Flower-class corvette built to the class's simple, quickly produced design at a moment when the Royal Navy needed convoy escorts in large numbers as quickly as British yards could turn them out.

Escorting Convoys Across Two Oceans

HMS Clover spent 1941 on convoy escort duty across a wide span of the Atlantic, escorting Convoy OS9 to Freetown in West Africa in October and November, the return passage of Convoy SL90 that same October, and the troop convoy WS12Z that November, before crossing to escort the transatlantic Convoy HX220 between December 1942 and January 1943, and going on to Mediterranean convoy operations later that year, a demanding and continuous operational tempo typical of the corvette fleet during this critical phase of the war.

A Grim Discovery

In April 1943, HMS Clover was involved in the rescue effort following the sinking of the destroyer HMS Beverley, one of the more devastating single losses of the Battle of the Atlantic, in which all but a handful of her 155-strong crew perished. HMS Clover recovered just four survivors from the wreck, a stark and sobering statistic that speaks to how quickly and completely a ship's company could be lost in the cold waters of the North Atlantic once a U-boat's torpedo found its mark, and to the genuinely harrowing nature of the search and rescue work that fell to escort vessels like HMS Clover in the aftermath of such losses.

A Long Merchant Career

Command of HMS Clover passed through four different officers over the course of the war, reflecting both the length of her service and the pressures placed on experienced escort commanders across years of continuous convoy duty. She was sold on 17 May 1947 and converted for merchant service as the Cloverlock, later passing into Chinese ownership as the Kai Feng, a fate shared by many Flower-class corvettes whose sturdy, versatile hulls found a genuinely useful second life in commercial shipping once their wartime work, including some of its grimmest moments, was finally done.