HMS Magpie (U82): Prince Philip's Only Naval Command

Constructed at Woolston

HMS Magpie was laid down at Thornycroft's Woolston shipyard in Southampton on 30 December 1941, launched on 24 March 1943 and completed that August, the seventh Royal Navy ship to carry the name, a Modified Black Swan-class sloop displacing 1,350 tons and armed with three twin 4-inch guns alongside Bofors and Oerlikon cannon, backed up by Hedgehog anti-submarine mortars and a substantial stock of 110 depth charges, a remarkably formidable submarine hunter for a ship of her modest size.

Two U-boats Sunk

HMS Magpie joined the 2nd Support Group based at Liverpool for North Atlantic convoy escort duties in October 1943, putting her under the command of Captain Frederic John Walker, widely regarded as the most successful U-boat hunter of the entire war; his group of sloops, among them HMS Starling, HMS Wild Goose and HMS Kite, is credited with more than twenty U-boats sunk over the course of the conflict. Both of Magpie's own kills fell within Walker's single most celebrated patrol, a 27-day sweep between 31 January and 26 February 1944 in which the group accounted for six U-boats in all.

The first came on 31 January 1944, sharing the destruction of U-592 with Starling and Wild Goose, a large underwater explosion bringing up debris including human remains and documents that confirmed the sinking. The second followed on 9 February, when Magpie combined with Kite and Starling to sink U-238 in what bore the hallmarks of Walker's trademark "creeping attack": one ship holding sonar contact from a distance while another crept in low and slow to deliver the killing depth-charge pattern, giving the U-boat no engine-noise warning of what was coming. A third U-boat, U-734, went down to Magpie's group-mates Wild Goose and Starling that same day, an extraordinarily costly 48 hours for the German submarine fleet.

Between her two actions Magpie herself expended a remarkable 252 depth charges and 48 Hedgehog projectiles, an intensive anti-submarine campaign even by the demanding standards of the mid-Atlantic battle.

Arctic Convoys and D-Day

HMS Magpie joined convoy JW 58 in March 1944, supporting Soviet operations by escorting the convoy safely to the Kola Inlet without losses, before taking part in one of the war's most significant single days, escorting an assault convoy to Gold Beach during the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, a central role in the largest amphibious invasion in history.

Accepting a U-boat's Surrender

HMS Magpie's war ended with a moment of real historical significance: on 10 May 1945, together with her sister ship HMS Amethyst, she took the surrender of the German submarine U-249, the first German U-boat to surrender in British waters, a fitting close to a wartime record that had already included two confirmed U-boat kills and a central role in the Normandy landings.

That surrender is worth the detail, because somebody had to be first and the arrangements were being invented as they went along. Magpie and Amethyst met U-249 off the Lizard on 10 May 1945, two days after the German capitulation, and Commander N. J. Weir went across to take the surrender from Oberleutnant Kock, who had five officers and forty-three ratings aboard. They then escorted her in to Portland, where the photographers were waiting.

There is a small irony in the choice of ship. U-249 had never sunk anything. In a war in which German submarines accounted for well over two thousand Allied merchant ships, the first one to hand itself over in British waters had an entirely blank score sheet. She was taken out into the Atlantic that December and scuttled with the rest of them under Operation Deadlight.

A Future Duke's Only Command

HMS Magpie was officially reclassified as a frigate in 1947, receiving the new pennant number F82, and went on to achieve her most lasting fame in an entirely different way.

Before that fame arrived she had more conventional peacetime work to do: in March 1949 Magpie and the frigate HMS Peacock were sent to the Jordanian port of Aqaba to support British forces securing it against advancing Israeli troops during the final stages of the 1948 Palestine war, and she later did a spell of duty at Trieste following rioting over the contested city's future between Italy and Yugoslavia.

From 2 September 1950 until July 1951, she was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Philip Mountbatten, later the Duke of Edinburgh, then 29 years old and newly promoted, in what would remain his only ever sea-going command. Magpie called at Izmir, Livorno, Tripoli, Athens, Monaco and Gibraltar during his time aboard, and at Athens Princess Elizabeth herself joined the ship for the passage through the Corinth Canal, a small domestic touch to what official Royal Navy accounts otherwise describe as a fairly standard mix of naval routine and ceremonial visits.

The end of Philip's command was not an ordinary end of appointment either. He had taken Magpie on 2 September 1950 at twenty-nine, and by all accounts he wanted a career at sea and was on the way to having one. In early December Magpie and the destroyer Chieftain went out to escort HMS Surprise, bringing Princess Elizabeth back to Malta from Greece, which is about as agreeable as peacetime naval duty gets.

Seven months later it was over. His appointment ended in July 1951 because the King's health had collapsed and his wife was going to need him ashore. George VI died the following February, Elizabeth became Queen, and Philip never went to sea in command of anything again. He was promoted commander in June 1952, and then to every rank above it by degrees over the following decades, without ever having another ship. Magpie, a 1943 sloop from a Southampton yard, is the only command he had.

The connection endured well beyond his time aboard: a magpie icon adopted by the ship in 1952 with Philip's own support went on to serve as the crest for successive HMS Magpies for decades afterward.

Postwar Service and a Quiet End

HMS Magpie continued to serve with the Mediterranean Fleet after Philip's command ended, and took part in the Coronation Fleet Review for Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

She served with the 7th Frigate Squadron at Simonstown in South Africa from 1955 to 1958, before returning home to pay off and being broken up by Hughes Bolckow at Blyth on 12 July 1959.

Her ship's bell and trophies were donated to Monkton Combe Junior School near Bath, ensuring that the ship a future Duke of Edinburgh once commanded was not forgotten once her working life had ended.