HMS Grafton (H89): Sunk While Rescuing the Survivors of Another Sinking Ship

Constructed at Woolston

HMS Grafton was built by John I. Thornycroft and Company at Woolston, Hampshire, laid down on 30 August 1934, launched on 18 September 1935 and completed on 20 March 1936, a G-class destroyer built at a cost of £248,485, a substantial sum at the time, equivalent to somewhere in the region of £22 million today.

She joined the 1st Destroyer Flotilla of the Mediterranean Fleet, and between August and September 1936 escorted the yacht carrying King Edward VIII on an eastern Mediterranean cruise, a prestigious early duty before she went on to patrol Spanish waters during the Spanish Civil War, enforcing the international non-intervention policy that, in practice, satisfied almost nobody involved in that brutal conflict.

The Fall of France

HMS Grafton transferred to British waters following the outbreak of war in September 1939, serving with various destroyer flotillas on contraband inspection and convoy escort duties.

In the spring of 1940 she escorted convoys to Norway and took part in operations supporting the desperate defence of Calais, before, on 27 May, evacuating over 1,600 troops from the beaches near Dunkirk as the British Expeditionary Force fell back toward the coast.

Torpedoed While Rescuing Survivors

HMS Grafton's own end came just two days later, on 29 May 1940, in one of the more harrowing episodes of the entire evacuation. While pulling survivors from the sinking destroyer HMS Wakeful out of the water off Nieuwpoort in Belgium, she was herself struck by a torpedo fired by the German submarine U-62.

The blast tore off her stern, though remarkably the ship remained afloat and on an even keel, before a second, unexplained explosion tore through her bridge, killing her commanding officer, Commander Cecil Edmund Charles Robinson, another officer, thirteen ratings and the ship's canteen manager.

The chaos that followed was itself tragic: in the confusion after the second explosion, friendly fire from nearby vessels sank the small drifter Comfort, which had been attempting to assist. HMS Ivanhoe managed to take off HMS Grafton's remaining survivors, but with her hull broken and no realistic prospect of towing her to safety, HMS Grafton was finally sunk, her wreck today lying in around 24 metres of water off the Belgian coast, a stark reminder that even the act of rescue itself carried mortal danger during the desperate days of Dunkirk.