HMS Skate (H39): The Great War Destroyer That Fought at Normandy

Built on the Clyde for the First War

HMS Skate was built at the John Brown shipyard in Clydebank, laid down in January 1916, launched on 11 January 1917 and completed the following month, an Admiralty R-class destroyer commissioned straight into the demands of the First World War's North Sea campaign.

Torpedoed in the North Sea

Skate joined the 11th Destroyer Flotilla before transferring to the Harwich Force's 10th Destroyer Flotilla, and on 12 March 1917 was torpedoed by the German submarine UC-69, an attack that cost one of her crew their life, a loss this account records honestly rather than glossing over. She survived the damage and continued in service, going on to help escort surrendered German U-boats into Harwich at the war's end, a striking bookend for a ship that had herself been a torpedo victim only months before.

A Quiet Interwar Life

With the war over, Skate settled into a much quieter role, serving as a torpedo school tender attached to HMS Vernon before being reduced to reserve status and transferred to the depot ship HMS Dido in March 1920, the kind of unglamorous administrative posting that saw many veteran destroyers out their days.

The Last of Her Class, and the Oldest Still Fighting

Remarkably, Skate was still around when the Second World War broke out, by which point she was the sole surviving ship of her entire class, earning her the distinction of being the oldest destroyer to see active service with the Royal Navy in that conflict. She began the war as an influence minesweeper working against the new German magnetic mines, before being rearmed in 1941 for convoy escort duties during the Battle of the Atlantic, serving on North Atlantic operations until 1942.

One Last Fight, at Normandy

Extraordinarily, this First World War veteran was still active enough to take part in the Normandy landings in June 1944, a genuinely remarkable feat for a destroyer that had first gone to sea nearly three decades earlier and had already survived being torpedoed in the previous war. She returned to HMS Vernon in 1945, was sold for scrap in 1947 and broken up that July at Newport in Wales, closing out one of the longest and most improbable careers of any Royal Navy destroyer of her generation.