HMS Zetland (L59): Barnard Castle's Hunt, Pedestal, the Broke at Algiers, Bari and a Norwegian Career

A Yarrow Hunt for Barnard Castle

HMS Zetland was one of seventeen Hunt Class escort destroyers ordered on 20 December 1939, a Type II built by Yarrow at Scotstoun. She was laid down on 2 October 1940, launched on 7 March 1942 and completed on 27 June 1942, armed with six 4 inch guns in three twin mountings.

Like the rest of her class she took the name of a foxhunt, in her case the Zetland Hunt, which is named after the Marquesses of Zetland; Zetland itself is the old name for Shetland. She was the second ship of the name, the first having been a minesweeper of the First World War.

Her badge was a gold lion's face inside a horseshoe, and Barnard Castle in County Durham, in the hunt's own country, adopted her after its Warship Week. Her captain for her first year and a half was Lieutenant John Wilkinson.

The photograph was taken in August 1943, as she lay at a buoy in harbour after a summer under repair. A few of her men stand on the forecastle beside the forward gun mounting, a hoist of flags flies from the yardarm and a harbour wall with buildings and a tower runs along behind her.

Pedestal

She had barely finished working up at Scapa Flow when she was sent south with the escort of convoy WS 21S, the fourteen merchant ships of Operation Pedestal, the most famous of the Malta convoys.

She was in the destroyer screen of Force Z, the battleships Rodney and Nelson and the carriers, which covered the convoy from Gibraltar as far as the Sicilian Narrows under heavy air attack, and lost Eagle to a U-boat on 11 August.

On 12 August Zetland and Pathfinder found an Italian submarine on the convoy's port bow and hunted her with depth charges until the convoy had passed out of reach; Ithuriel then forced her to the surface and rammed her. When Force Z turned back that evening, Zetland was one of the destroyers detached to screen the damaged Indomitable and Rodney back to Gibraltar.

From there she went straight out to meet convoy SL 118 from Freetown, which was under attack by a pack of U-boats. When the armed merchant cruiser Cheshire was torpedoed, Zetland and the Polish destroyer Blyskawica were detached to see her into Belfast.

For the next two months she escorted troop convoys through the North-Western Approaches and screened Formidable, Rodney and Nelson in home waters, until her Asdic dome was damaged and she went into dock at Greenock.

The Broke at Algiers

She sailed for Gibraltar at the end of October 1942 to join the 57th Destroyer Division, the Hunts attached to the Eastern Task Force for Operation Torch, and on 8 November she was off Algiers giving gunfire support to the landings, at one point putting out a searchlight at the fort on Cape Matifou.

Inside the harbour, the destroyer Broke had smashed through the boom to land American troops on the quays and was being shot to pieces by the French batteries. Zetland engaged the guns whilst Broke got clear, then took her in tow for Gibraltar.

The two ships collided during the tow and Broke was too badly damaged to be saved; Zetland took off her crew, and Broke foundered on 10 November.

All that winter she escorted the coastal convoys along the Algerian coast. On 30 January 1943 the corvette Samphire was torpedoed north-east of Bougie whilst escorting the same convoy; Zetland came back after searching for the submarine and found men in the water, but her boat could pick up only four of them.

In May she joined the blockade off Cape Bon to stop the defeated Axis armies escaping from Tunisia, and on 9 May she and Bicester sank a small enemy vessel north-east of the cape, only to be attacked in error by RAF Spitfires, which left Bicester badly damaged.

Jarrow and the Bari Raid

The wear of ten months' hard running had told, and in June 1943 she came home for repair at Palmers yard at Jarrow, worked up again at Tobermory and was back in the Mediterranean by the autumn with the 59th Destroyer Division, escorting convoys to and from Bari and patrolling off the Dalmatian coast. On the night of 2 December 1943 the Luftwaffe struck at Bari harbour.

A ship loaded with ammunition blew up and seventeen merchant ships were sunk. Another of them, the American Liberty ship John Harvey, had been secretly carrying mustard gas bombs, and the gas spread through the harbour in the burning oil and smoke.

Zetland was badly damaged and contaminated, and Bicester towed her to Taranto for repair.

Southern France and the Aegean

She rejoined the Adriatic force in January 1944, under her new captain, Lieutenant Christopher Bax, from March, and on 12 March she and Lauderdale shelled a searchlight position at Dubrovnik.

In August she and Oakley escorted the assault convoy SS 1 from Naples by way of Ajaccio to the Camel sector of the Riviera beaches for Operation Dragoon, and she stayed off the beachhead on the day of the landings, 15 August. In September she joined the British Aegean Force, harrying the German garrisons as they pulled out of the Greek islands.

On the evening of 18 September the Polish-manned Garland sighted a U-boat in the southern Aegean, and Zetland, Troubridge, Terpsichore and the Hunt Brecon joined her in a hunt that lasted through the night, until U-407 came up the next morning and Garland sank her.

Zetland was then left to blockade Santorin, and on 28 September she, Brecon and Liddesdale went into Pegadia Bay on Scarpanto, sinking a caique and silencing the shore batteries. Her companions in the force included Cleveland and Calpe.

Harwich and Home

In January 1945 she was sent home to join the 16th Destroyer Flotilla at Harwich, where the U-boats with schnorkels and the E-boats were still attacking the coastal convoys, and she was in action with E-boats in the North Sea.

After the German surrender she sailed for Alexandria to refit for the war against Japan, but the war ended whilst the work was in hand, and she came home in October 1945 to join the Portsmouth Local Flotilla.

KNM Tromsø

She went into reserve at Portsmouth in 1946. At the end of 1952 she was lent to the Royal Norwegian Navy for four years and renamed Tromsø, and in July 1956 Norway bought her outright.

The Norwegians gave her a lattice mast and replaced her after gun mounting with two Squid anti-submarine mortars, and she carried the pennant D311 and later F311 when she was rated a frigate. She was sold to be broken up in 1965.

Her battle honours were Atlantic 1942-43, Malta Convoys 1942, North Africa 1942-43, Mediterranean 1943-44, South France 1944, Aegean 1944 and Adriatic 1944. Her sister Bramham was also on Pedestal, and saw the tanker Ohio into Malta.