HMS Vimiera: A Veteran of Dunkirk Lost to a Mine in Home Waters

Built for the 1917-18 Programme

HMS Vimiera was a V-class destroyer built under the Royal Navy's 1917-18 construction programme, fitted with Brown-Curtis steam turbines and Yarrow water-tube boilers and armed with a mix of guns and torpedo tubes typical of her class, entering service in the final phase of the First World War.

Carrying Soviet Diplomats to Reval

In the uncertain years following the war, Vimiera undertook the unusual duty of carrying the Soviet trade delegates Leonid Krasin and Viktor Nogin back to the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic via a trip to Reval, part of the tentative Anglo-Soviet trade negotiations that marked one of the earliest diplomatic contacts between Britain and the new Bolshevik state.

Converted for a New War

Ahead of the Second World War, Vimiera was converted into a WAIR-configuration escort destroyer with enhanced anti-aircraft and anti-submarine fittings, joining the Nore Command in January 1940 before transferring to Dover Command that April as the situation in France deteriorated rapidly.

Rescue Work at Dunkirk

Vimiera played an active part in the Dunkirk evacuation, rescuing survivors from HMS Whitley and evacuating personnel from multiple locations along the French coast, sustaining substantial damage during the fighting around Boulogne and Calais and entering repairs on 25 May 1940, right at the height of the crisis.

Lost With Heavy Loss of Life

On 9 January 1942, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Angus Alexander Mackenzie, HMS Vimiera struck a mine in the Thames Estuary off East Spile Buoy near the Isle of Sheppey and sank with the loss of around ninety-six of her crew, a devastating loss so close to home that this account records with the full gravity it deserves.

It was a stark reminder that even Britain's own coastal waters remained dangerous throughout the war, claiming a destroyer that had already proven her worth in some of the conflict's darkest early days.