HMS Turquoise (T45): A Trawler That Went Through Three More Names Before Retirement

Built Well Before the War

HMS Turquoise was built by Smiths Dock Company at South Bank-on-Tees, launched on 7 March 1935 and commissioned that November, an anti-submarine trawler armed with a single 4-inch gun that entered service nearly five years before the outbreak of the Second World War, giving her crews plenty of time to work up before the fighting began in earnest.

A Collision With a Torpedoed Destroyer

In June 1941, Turquoise was involved in a collision with the destroyer HMS Vanessa after Vanessa had already been damaged by a German air attack in the North Sea, an unfortunate accident during what was clearly a chaotic and dangerous stretch of water at the time, though the trawler herself weathered the incident and continued her service.

Five Commanding Officers Through the War

Turquoise served under five different commanding officers across the course of the war, from Lieutenant Commander Sidney Gunn in the early months through to Temporary Lieutenant Andrew Harris from August 1943, part of the steady rotation of officers that kept the Royal Navy's large fleet of small anti-submarine trawlers operating throughout the conflict.

Three New Names in Civilian Life

Sold in 1946, Turquoise went on to an unusually well-documented afterlife, renamed St Oswald that same year, then Woolton in 1950, and finally Wyre Woolton in 1954, before finally being scrapped at Preston in 1957, a truly long working life spanning more than two decades from her original 1935 commissioning to her eventual retirement under her third civilian identity.