HMS Snipe (U20): Sabotage, an Antarctic Expedition, and a Landing on Deception Island

Ordered, Cancelled, and Ordered Again

HMS Snipe was built by William Denny and Brothers at Dumbarton, though her path to the water was not straightforward: originally ordered from John Brown and Company, that contract was cancelled, and she was re-ordered on 8 December 1942 with construction not beginning until 21 September 1944. She was launched on 20 December 1945 and commissioned on 9 September 1946, a Modified Black Swan-class sloop that arrived just after the war she had been designed for had ended, and was redesignated a frigate the following year when her pennant changed to F20.

Sabotage Aboard Her Own Machinery

Snipe's peacetime career began with an unsettling discovery: in September 1946, shortly after joining the North America and West Indies Station, two apparent sabotage attempts were found involving powder placed on turbine equipment, leading to the court martial of an engineer for failing to report it, an unusual and troubling start for a ship barely out of her first commission.

Re-Establishing Britain's Antarctic Bases

In January and February 1948, Snipe transported the Governor of the Falkland Islands on an Antarctic expedition to re-establish British bases in Graham Land and the South Shetland Islands, part of Britain's postwar effort to maintain its presence in the contested Antarctic territories. Despite the underlying territorial disputes, her crew had a notably cordial encounter with Argentine naval vessels during the voyage, the two sides exchanging food supplies even as their governments disagreed over sovereignty.

The Deception Island Incident

By 1952 Snipe had transferred to the Home Fleet, and in February 1953, shortly after the Coronation Review, she took part in the Deception Island incident, landing Royal Marines to destroy Argentine and Chilean military installations on the disputed Antarctic island, a genuinely tense episode in the long-running three-way territorial dispute over the South Shetland Islands and one of the more unusual assignments given to any postwar Royal Navy sloop.

Scrapped at Newport

HMS Snipe's operational career wound down through the mid-1950s, and she was eventually placed on the disposal list, arriving in tow at the demolition site in Newport, Wales on 2 August 1960 for scrapping by J. Cashmore, closing out a career defined less by wartime combat than by the strange, cold politics of Antarctic sovereignty.