HMS Verdun (L93): The Destroyer That Carried the Unknown Warrior Home

Named for a French Sacrifice

HMS Verdun was named as a tribute to the French people and the extraordinary endurance of their armies at Verdun in 1916, one of the longest and costliest battles of the First World War. The Admiralty V-class destroyer was built by Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn on Tyneside, launched on 21 August 1917 and completed that November, joining the Grand Fleet and Harwich Force.

Leading the German Fleet Into Internment

In November 1918, Verdun had the striking distinction of preceding King George V's own vessel through the lines of the interned German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow during Operation ZZ, a particularly symbolic role at the moment the Kaiser's navy was led into captivity.

Carrying the Unknown Warrior Home

Verdun's single most significant duty came in November 1920, when she was given the solemn honour of transporting the remains of the Unknown Warrior from France to Britain.

On 10 November 1920, she berthed at Boulogne-sur-Mer, where the coffin was carried up the gangplank and piped aboard with an admiral's salute, before six escorting destroyers accompanied her across the Channel to Dover, from where the coffin travelled by train to Westminster Abbey for burial, a moment of profound national mourning and remembrance that this account treats with the gravity it deserves.

Bomb Damage and the Loss of Her Captain

Converted to an anti-aircraft escort in 1940 and redesignated with the pennant number L93, Verdun operated as a convoy escort from Rosyth, and in November 1940 suffered bomb damage that killed her captain and eleven of her crew, a serious loss this account records with due respect. She went on to support the Arctic convoys in 1942 and spent the rest of the war on coastal escort duties.

A Bell in Westminster Abbey

After VE Day, HMS Verdun was decommissioned and sold for scrap at Granton, Edinburgh in April 1946, but her ship's bell survives to this day, hanging in Westminster Abbey close to the tomb of the Unknown Warrior she once carried home, a fitting and permanent memorial to her most solemn duty.