HMS Manxman (M70): The 40-Knot Minelayer That Sailed Into Genoa Disguised as a French Destroyer

Built for Speed

HMS Manxman was built by Alexander Stephen and Sons at Glasgow, launched on 5 September 1940 and commissioned on 7 June 1941, an Abdiel-class fast minelayer displacing 2,650 tons standard and capable of a genuinely remarkable 40 knots on her Parsons geared turbines, a speed that made her, and her sisters, some of the fastest ships in the entire Royal Navy, a quality that would prove essential given the exceptionally dangerous waters she was about to be sent into.

Running the Malta Gauntlet

HMS Manxman's first mission saw her deliver mines to Murmansk, before she transferred to the Mediterranean, where her sheer speed made her ideally suited to fast, high-risk supply runs to besieged Malta. In July 1941 she took part in Operation Substance, escorting convoys to the island and providing close escort under heavy Italian air and naval attack, exactly the sort of dash-and-dodge work her class had been designed for.

Disguised as a French Destroyer in the Gulf of Genoa

HMS Manxman's most colourful escapade came in August 1941, during Operation Mincemeat (an entirely different operation from the famous 1943 deception of the same name), when she laid mines in the Gulf of Genoa while disguised as the French destroyer Léopard, flying false colours to slip past enemy observation in Italian home waters, a genuinely audacious piece of naval theatre that relied as much on nerve as on her considerable turn of speed.

From the Channel to Madagascar

HMS Manxman returned to Home Fleet duties between October 1941 and February 1942, laying mines off the French coast at Brittany, Lorient and Dieppe as well as in Norwegian and home waters, before joining the Eastern Fleet at Kilindini in the Indian Ocean in March 1942. On 8 October 1942 she took part in the assault and capture of Nosy Be in Madagascar, then held by Vichy French forces, a genuinely far-flung deployment for a ship whose career had begun in the cold waters of the Arctic convoys.

Torpedoed Off Algiers

HMS Manxman returned to the Mediterranean in late 1942 for further Malta resupply runs and minelaying in the Sicilian Channel, and on 1 December 1942, while transiting from Algiers to Gibraltar, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-375 and suffered severe damage. She underwent emergency repairs at Oran and Gibraltar before undertaking a far more extensive repair programme at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a lengthy and unglamorous convalescence for a ship whose reputation had, until then, rested almost entirely on how quickly she could get in and out of danger.

Victory in the Far East

HMS Manxman was recommissioned on 10 April 1945, reached Colombo on 14 July that year and was stationed at Melbourne on Victory over Japan Day, a fitting enough posting given how far her wartime service had ranged, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and finally to the Pacific theatre's edge.

Three Decades of Peacetime Service

HMS Manxman remained in Australian waters until June 1946, deployed to the Far East between February and December 1947 following repairs at Chatham, and joined the Mediterranean Fleet in 1951 after a refit. In 1953 she took part in the Coronation Fleet Review and also appeared in the film Sailor of the King, playing the part of the German cruiser Essen, a curious little sideline for a genuine wartime veteran. She deployed for headquarters duties during the 1956 Suez Crisis, was converted to a minesweeper support vessel in the early 1960s with her forward boiler removed to make room for the new role, and commissioned at Singapore Naval Base in 1963, where she patrolled the waters off Sebatik Island during the Indonesia to Malaysia Confrontation. She returned to the United Kingdom in 1968, was used for engineering training at Devonport, and was ultimately transferred to reserve at Chatham following fire damage, before finally being broken up at Newport, Wales, in 1973, closing out a career of more than three decades that had taken her from a disguised mine-laying raid off Genoa to training duty in a Devon dockyard.