HMS Lulworth (Y60): An American Coast Guard Cutter Sinks an Italian Submarine

From the Bering Sea to the Atlantic

HMS Lulworth began her career as USCGC Chelan, a Lake-class cutter laid down by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation at Quincy, Massachusetts, on 14 November 1927 and launched on 19 May 1928, entering United States Coast Guard service that November. Homeported at Seattle, she spent the 1930s on annual Bering Sea patrols, earning recognition for a 1931 rescue of the crew of the wrecked motor vessel Gladiator near the Aleutian Islands, before relocating to Boston in 1937 for North Atlantic patrol and ice observation duties.

Crossing the Atlantic Under Lend-Lease

HMS Lulworth's story took a dramatic turn under the Lend-Lease Act: transferred to the Royal Navy on 2 May 1941 and commissioned as HMS Lulworth, she sailed to the Clyde for refit before joining Western Approaches Command based at Londonderry that July, becoming one of the many American vessels that helped bolster British convoy escort strength in the desperate early years of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Rescuing 89 Survivors in Three Months

HMS Lulworth carried out a remarkable string of rescues between August and October 1941, pulling 89 survivors from four separate merchant ships torpedoed by German U-boats: 27 from the Segundo, sunk by U-557, 37 from the Niceto de Larrinaga, sunk by U-103, five from the St Clair II, sunk by U-67, and 47 from the Bennekom, sunk by U-96, a genuinely extraordinary rescue record achieved within the space of just a few months.

Forcing an Italian Submarine to Scuttle

HMS Lulworth's most significant combat action came on 14 July 1942, while escorting convoy SL 115, when she depth-charged the Italian submarine Pietro Calvi and forced her to the surface, then opened fire on the damaged vessel. Rather than risk capture, Pietro Calvi's crew scuttled their own boat and abandoned ship, with 35 of her crew surviving to be picked up, a genuinely decisive action that removed a significant Italian submarine from the Atlantic battle without the Royal Navy needing to sink her outright.

The Indian Ocean and Burma

HMS Lulworth was refitted for service in the Indian Ocean in July 1943, escorting convoys between Kilindini, Aden and Durban, before transferring to Trincomalee in 1945 to take part in operations off Burma, including Operation Dracula and Operation Zipper, adding yet another theatre to an already exceptionally varied wartime career for a ship that had begun life patrolling for wrecked fishing vessels in the Bering Sea.

Back to America and a Quiet End

HMS Lulworth was returned to the United States Coast Guard on 12 February 1946, resuming her original name as USCGC Chelan, and was sold for scrap on 23 October 1947, closing out the career of a ship whose journey, from Alaskan rescue work to sinking convoys of enemy submarines in the Atlantic and fighting in Burma, stands as one of the more remarkable individual vessel histories of the entire lend-lease programme.