HMS Sturdy

About

HMS Sturdy was an S-class destroyer (1917), which served with the Royal Navy. Launched in 1919, the destroyer visited the Free City of Danzig the following year but then spent most of the next decade in the Reserve Fleet. After a brief period of service in Ireland in 1931, Sturdy was divested of armament in 1934 and equipped with a single davit to rescue ditched aircraft, and acted as plane guard to the aircraft carrier Courageous.

The ship subsequently took part in the 1935 Naval Review. Re-armed as a minelayer, the destroyer was recommissioned the following year and reactivated at the start of the Second World War. Sturdy was then employed escorting convoys in the Atlantic Ocean, but ran aground off the coast off the Inner Hebrides island at Tiree in 1940.

The vessel was split in two by the waves. The crew evacuated, apart from three sailors who died, and the destroyer was lost.