HMS Comus (R43): Damaged Over Korea, Then Off to Chase Pirates From a Reef

A Destroyer for the Far East

HMS Comus was built by John I. Thornycroft and Company at Woolston, her keel laid on 21 August 1943, launched on 14 March 1945, and commissioned on 8 July 1946, a C-class destroyer displacing 1,885 tons standard and up to 2,545 tons at full load, armed with four QF 4.5-inch guns, later reduced to three, twin 40mm Bofors mounts and eight 21-inch torpedo tubes. She served with the 8th Destroyer Squadron in the Far East from 1947 through to 1957, a full decade in one of the Royal Navy's most consistently demanding overseas theatres.

Damaged by North Korean Aircraft

HMS Comus served during the Korean War between 1950 and 1951, and on 22 August 1950, was damaged in the Yellow Sea by two North Korean Ilyushin Il-10 attack aircraft, a genuinely dangerous encounter for a destroyer operating in support of United Nations forces during the war's chaotic early months, when North Korean air power, though ultimately overmatched, could still inflict real damage on Allied ships operating close to the Korean coastline.

Chasing Pirates From a Reef

On 4 July 1951, HMS Comus went to the assistance of the British cargo ship Peterstar, which had run aground on Pratas Reef in the South China Sea and been boarded by pirates, a genuinely dramatic incident harking back to an older and more traditional kind of naval duty even amid the modern Cold War tensions of the Korean conflict. Contemporary reporting confirmed the grounded ship was subsequently reported safe, suggesting HMS Comus's intervention succeeded in resolving the situation, a reminder that piracy in the waters of the Far East remained a genuine, practical concern for merchant shipping well into the mid-twentieth century.

Bombarding the Malayan Emergency

In 1955, HMS Comus was engaged in the bombardment of Communist forces during the Malayan Emergency, the long-running counter-insurgency campaign fought against Communist guerrillas in British Malaya, adding naval gunfire support to a conflict fought largely in dense jungle terrain, where warships like HMS Comus provided a valuable, if unconventional, contribution against an enemy far removed from the naval engagements her class had originally been designed to fight.

The End of Service

HMS Comus was withdrawn from active service and listed for disposal in 1955, and was eventually scrapped at John Cashmore Ltd's breakers yard in Newport, Wales, on 12 November 1958, closing out the career of a destroyer whose Far East decade had brought her into contact with everything from North Korean air attack to old-fashioned piracy on a South China Sea reef.