HMS Escapade (H17): From Churchill's Escort to a Hedgehog Bomb That Killed Her Own Crew

Built at Greenock

HMS Escapade was ordered on 1 November 1932 from Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, laid down at Greenock, launched on 30 January 1934, and commissioned on 30 August 1934, at a cost of £249,987 excluding armament. An E-class destroyer, a slightly improved version of the preceding D class, she displaced 1,405 tons standard, rising to 1,940 tons at deep load, and her Parsons geared turbines produced 36,000 shaft horsepower for a top speed of 35.5 knots. She originally carried four single 4.7-inch guns, machine guns and torpedo tubes, an armament that would be steadily reworked as the war progressed to keep pace with the changing nature of the threats she faced.

Spain and the Early War

HMS Escapade transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet during 1935 and 1936 amid the Abyssinia Crisis, and went on to serve five separate patrols during the Spanish Civil War, enforcing the Non-Intervention Committee's arms blockade intended to prevent foreign weapons reaching either side of that brutal conflict. She joined the 12th Destroyer Flotilla for escort and patrol duties in the Western Approaches when the Second World War broke out in September 1939, making unsuccessful attacks on U-boats on 5 and 15 November that year, and rescuing survivors from the torpedoed SS Navasota on 5 December. On 25 February 1940, while escorting Convoy HN14 to Norway, she spotted and depth-charged the submarine U-63, contributing to its eventual destruction by gunfire from other British destroyers.

Norway, Dakar and a Prime Minister's Escort

HMS Escapade took part in the Norwegian Campaign from 7 April 1940, responding to the sighting of the German invasion fleet, screening HMS Southampton and HMS Electra out of Scapa Flow, protecting troopship landings at Harstad in mid-April, and screening the evacuation convoys that withdrew Allied forces from Norway in early June as the campaign collapsed. She was detached that August and September to escort the battleship HMS Barham during Operation Menace, the failed Allied attempt to seize Dakar in French West Africa from Vichy forces.

HMS Escapade escorted HMS Nelson during the unsuccessful hunt for the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in February 1941, and in August that year formed part of the escort screening HMS Prince of Wales as she carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic to Newfoundland for the conference that produced the Atlantic Charter, one of the defining diplomatic statements of the entire war, and a genuinely prestigious assignment for a single destroyer to be trusted with.

The Arctic Convoys

HMS Escapade took part in Operation Dervish in August 1941, the very first Arctic convoy sent to Russia, arriving at Arkhangelsk on 31 August, and went on to cover Convoys PQ 1, PQ 6 and QP 4, followed by PQ 14 and PQ 15 in April 1942, some of the most dangerous convoy routes of the entire war, combining relentless U-boat and Luftwaffe attack with brutal Arctic weather. She also covered the disastrous May 1942 attempt to transfer the damaged cruiser HMS Trinidad from Murmansk to Iceland, an effort that ultimately ended in HMS Trinidad's deliberate scuttling after further damage proved impossible to repair.

Malta and Operation Torch

HMS Escapade escorted Convoy WS19Z to Malta during Operation Harpoon in June 1942, one of the most fiercely contested convoy battles of the entire Mediterranean campaign, and covered the carrier HMS Argus on the return voyage. Later that year, she escorted HMS Furious to Gibraltar and took part in the Operation Torch convoys KMF1 and KMF2, supporting the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, before joining Escort Group B3 of Western Approaches Command from November 1942 to September 1943, escorting Convoys HX 228, ONS 175, HX 232 and HX 239 through the decisive Battle of the Atlantic engagements of May 1943, the month that marked the effective turning point against the German U-boat campaign.

A Weapon That Turned on Her Own Crew

HMS Escapade's war took a genuinely tragic turn on 20 September 1943, while she was escorting Convoy ONS 18 off Northern Ireland. During anti-submarine operations, one of her Hedgehog projectiles, the very weapon that had helped make ships like HMS Escapade so effective against U-boats, prematurely exploded on deck. The blast killed fifteen ratings outright and wounded ten more, one of them mortally, while destroying her 'B' gun mount, the Hedgehog mount itself, her bridge and her wheelhouse, a devastating accident that inflicted more damage and cost more lives in a single moment than most of her wartime engagements against the enemy combined. The extensive damage required over a year of repairs, sidelining HMS Escapade for the remainder of 1943 and virtually the whole of 1944.

The End of the War, and the End of the Ship

HMS Escapade returned to duty on 30 December 1944, trialling the newer Squid anti-submarine mortar, which had replaced the ill-fated Hedgehog fit on her forward mount, while serving with the 8th Escort Group in the war's final months. She escorted Norwegian personnel home to their newly liberated country in May 1945, a fittingly hopeful final wartime duty after everything the ship and her crew had endured.

HMS Escapade briefly served with the Anti-Submarine Training Flotilla after the war before being approved for scrapping on 18 February 1946. She was stripped of equipment on 15 November 1946, paid off as tender to HMS Tartar on 3 December that year, and handed over to the British Iron and Steel Corporation for scrapping on 17 May 1947, with breaking up beginning at Grangemouth on 3 August 1947 under G. W. Brunton, closing out the career of a destroyer whose service had ranged from escorting a wartime prime minister across the Atlantic to surviving one of the most devastating accidental explosions any Royal Navy ship suffered from its own weaponry during the entire war.