HMS Cygnet (H83): The Destroyer That Rescued 857 Souls From the Arandora Star

Built at Barrow

HMS Cygnet was built by Vickers-Armstrongs at Barrow-in-Furness, ordered on 15 July 1930, laid down on 1 December that year, launched on 29 September 1931, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 9 April 1932, a C-class destroyer displacing 1,375 long tons standard, capable of 36 knots and carrying a complement of 145 officers and men. HMS Cygnet served with the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet, deploying to the Red Sea during the Abyssinian Crisis from September 1935 to April 1936, and conducting Bay of Biscay patrols during the summer of 1936 amid the opening stages of the Spanish Civil War.

Sold to Canada

HMS Cygnet was sold to Canada on 20 October 1936, alongside her sister ship HMS Crescent, for a combined £400,000, and was renamed HMCS St. Laurent, formally handed over on 1 February 1937 and commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy on 17 February that year. She was initially based at Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving in May 1937, before transferring to Esquimalt, British Columbia, in 1938, joining a small but rapidly growing Canadian destroyer force.

Rescuing the Arandora Star

The former HMS Cygnet was ordered to Halifax on 31 August 1939 as war broke out, arriving on 18 September and escorting local convoys, including the convoy carrying half of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division to Britain on 10 December that year. Ordered to Plymouth on 24 May 1940, she took part in the evacuation of French soldiers from Le Havre that June and engaged a German artillery battery in the process. On 2 July 1940, she rescued 857 survivors from the torpedoed liner SS Arandora Star, a genuinely enormous rescue effort and one of the more remarkable single humanitarian achievements of her entire wartime career. She went on to help damage U-52 on 4 August, and rescued survivors from the torpedoed HMS Forfar on 2 December that same year.

Sinking Two U-Boats

Following a refit between March and July 1941, the former HMS Cygnet joined the 14th Escort Group, operating with the Newfoundland and Mid-Ocean Escort Forces through the height of the Battle of the Atlantic and receiving Type 271 radar in December 1942. On 27 December 1942, she was credited with sinking U-356 north of the Azores, and on 10 March 1944, she took part in sinking U-845 in the North Atlantic, working alongside HMS Forester and the Canadian frigates HMCS Owen Sound and HMCS Swansea, a genuinely strong combat record against the U-boat threat.

Screening the D-Day Invasion

The former HMS Cygnet transferred to the 11th Escort Group in May 1944, and on D-Day itself, 6 June 1944, was stationed alongside the Canadian destroyers Chaudière, Gatineau, Kootenay and Ottawa at the entrance to the English Channel, guarding against U-boat attacks on the vast invasion convoys supporting the Normandy landings. She went on to conduct further anti-submarine operations in the Bay of Biscay, survived an attack by a German glide bomb on 8 August 1944, and rescued survivors from U-270 on 13 August that year.

Following a refit at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, between November 1944 and 20 March 1945, and after Germany's surrender on 6 May 1945, the former HMS Cygnet was employed as a troop transport before finally paying off on 10 October 1945. She was sold for scrap and broken up in 1947, closing out a career that had carried her from Home Fleet destroyer duty through the Abyssinian Crisis, a mass rescue at sea, two confirmed U-boat kills, and a direct role guarding the invasion of Normandy.