HMS Gravelines (R24): Named for the Armada, Undone by a Defence Review

The Battle of Gravelines

HMS Gravelines was one of the Battle Class destroyers, named after battles fought by British forces, and she took her name from the decisive action of the Armada campaign.

On 8 August 1588 by the modern calendar, after the fireships had scattered the Spanish fleet from its anchorage at Calais, the English ships under Lord Howard of Effingham, Drake and Hawkins caught the Armada off the Flemish port of Gravelines and battered it for a day at close range. The Spanish ships were driven towards the sandbanks and then north into the North Sea, and the Armada never recovered.

Gravelines was the first ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name; her sister Armada carried the name of the campaign itself.

Built at Birkenhead

She was ordered in 1942 from J. Samuel White at Cowes, but German bombing of the Cowes yard led to the order being moved to Cammell Laird at Birkenhead. She was launched on 30 November 1944, and completed on 14 June 1946, the day the photograph at the top of this page was taken.

The war was over and the Navy had more destroyers than it could man, and within two months she had been paid off into reserve. She spent three years laid up.

The 3rd Destroyer Flotilla

In July 1949 she was at last commissioned for service, in the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, with Saintes as leader and her sisters Armada and Vigo, and in August the flotilla sailed for Malta to join the Mediterranean Fleet, replacing the old wartime V Class destroyers. For the next four years she served with the fleet, in the round of exercises, visits and duties described in the articles on her flotilla-mates.

In 1951, when Iran nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the British oil workers at Abadan were threatened, she was sent on detached service to Basra, at the head of the Persian Gulf. In March 1953 she exchanged crews with her sister St Kitts, and that year she was withdrawn from service and laid up again.

An Abandoned Refit

In 1957 she was chosen for a refit and modernisation, to bring her up to the standard of the other Battle Class ships then being rebuilt, and in 1958 she was taken in hand at Devonport. But the Defence Review of 1957, under Duncan Sandys, had decided to cut the fleet sharply, and in November 1958 the work was stopped and she was returned to reserve, half rebuilt.

The money already spent on her was criticised in the Comptroller and Auditor General's annual report of 1961. That year she was placed on the disposal list and sold to T. W. Ward, and she arrived at Rosyth to be broken up on 22 March 1961, less than fifteen years after she was completed. Her sisters are in the Battle Class destroyers collection.