HMS Delphinium: Rescuer at Sea, Then Investigator of Slavery in Africa

HMS Delphinium

Built at Glasgow

HMS Delphinium was built by Napier and Miller of Glasgow, laid down on 1 July 1915 and launched on 23 December that year, an Arabis-class sloop displacing 1,200 tons, measuring 267 feet 9 inches in length, and capable of 16 knots on a four-cylinder triple expansion engine, part of a class built specifically to meet the urgent wartime demand for minesweeping and convoy escort vessels.

Minesweeping and Rescue on the Irish Sea

HMS Delphinium was stationed at Queenstown, serving initially with the 3rd Sloop Flotilla before reassignment in December 1918 to the 23rd Fleet Sweeping Flotilla operating from Buncrana, spending the war performing minesweeping and merchant escort duties in some of the most heavily contested waters around the British Isles. On 1 April 1917, she escorted the tanker RFA Boxleaf through the Irish Sea, and on 28 April that year, rescued the crew of the merchant ship Anne Marie after the German submarine SM U-70 sank her, a reminder of just how constant and immediate the U-boat threat remained around British coastal waters throughout the war.

On 31 August 1917, HMS Delphinium towed the damaged American tanker SS Albert Watts into Lough Swilly, and on 2 October that year, assisted in evacuating the crew of the armoured cruiser HMS Drake after she sank near Rathlin Island, direct participation in one of the more significant individual ship losses of the entire war in home waters.

A League of Nations Inquiry Into Slavery

HMS Delphinium paid off on 23 July 1919, but was recommissioned on 18 December 1928 for service on the Africa Station, a posting that lasted until 1932. In 1929, she hosted a League of Nations Commission of Enquiry investigating allegations of slavery, a genuinely unusual role for a First World War-era sloop and one that placed her at the centre of an important international human rights investigation rather than any conventional naval operation.

The End of Service

HMS Delphinium was sold for scrap to Rees Metals Ltd on 13 October 1933, closing out a career that had carried her from wartime convoy escort and rescue work in the Irish Sea to a genuinely distinctive final chapter supporting international efforts against slavery off the African coast, a career considerably more varied than her relatively modest wartime origins might otherwise suggest.