Qualla: HMS Sturdy (1919)

HMS Sturdy (1919): Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Surgeon Oscar Parkes, Public domain. By dawn on 30 October 1940, Lieutenant-Commander George Cooper had been guessing for two days. The weather had blown his destroyer apart from her sister ship, the convoy he was supposed to meet was somewhere out in the Atlantic dark, and Derry seemed a more sensible bet than another night of guessing. When the bow struck rock off the west coast of Tiree, the guess ran out. Sturdy stranded, the waves rolled in, and within hours the destroyer that had survived twenty-one years in the Royal Navy lay broken in half on a Hebridean shore.

Read more: HMS Sturdy (1919) on Qualla

Image: Surgeon Oscar Parkes | Public domain

HMS Sturdy (1919): An Admiralty Destroyer, Slightly Cheaper

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Dingley (scanner), Public domain. The Admiralty had ordered her in June 1917, one of thirty-three S-class destroyers in the Twelfth War Construction Programme. The design was a deliberate compromise, derived from the earlier R class but trimmed for cost and speed. Scotts of Greenock laid her keel in April 1918 wi...

Read more: HMS Sturdy (1919) on Qualla

Image: Andy Dingley (scanner) | Public domain

HMS Sturdy (1919): Twenty Years of Almost Nothing

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Dingley (scanner), Public domain. Commissioned in October 1919, Sturdy joined the Reserve Fleet at Portsmouth and stayed there. February 1920 brought a brief deployment to the Free City of Danzig, escorting High Commissioner Reginald Tower through the city's plebiscite, but the assignment lasted weeks. The next d...

Read more: HMS Sturdy (1919) on Qualla

Image: Andy Dingley (scanner) | Public domain

HMS Sturdy (1919): Convoy HX 79 and the Wolfpack

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Dingley (scanner), Public domain. When that war came, Sturdy was configured as a minelayer, capable of carrying forty mines instead of her aft guns and torpedoes. She never laid one. The Battle of the Atlantic needed escorts, not minelayers, and Lt-Cdr Cooper took her into convoy duty. On 19 October 1940, she was...

Read more: HMS Sturdy (1919) on Qualla

Image: Andy Dingley (scanner) | Public domain