British Forces

Flower Class Corvette.

HMS Colombine, "Flower Class" corvette, pictured for a Life/Picture Post feature, 1940. These ships were, in a way, the seagoing equivalent of other British stopgap weapons such as the Smith Gun and the Blacker Bombard. They were designed to make up for the shortage of anti-submarine ships for British service in the North Atlantic earlier in the war, pending the arrival of more powerful options in the form of destroyers and frigates. These corvettes were definitely rough, ready ... and very, very uncomfortable, not to mention (even by warship standards) unsafe. Armour and armament were light, other than for depth charge dischargers and antisubmarine mine systems. Royal Navy safety and security standards went to the winds; the design inspiration lay in small civilian ships (notably whalers) rather than warships. Speed was low, stability was poor, crew comfort was not a consideration. The old Royal Navy practice of leaving the bridge uncovered was followed; since the ships' design was of a "short forecastle" nature (that is, short distance between the prow and the bridge), North Atlantic conditions meant that the bridge party spent most of their watch saturated in salt water. The deck, generally, was a miserable place to be. Because, at least in part, of the poor defensive armament, casualties were high - many corvettes were sent to the bottom or severely damaged by submarine or air attack. And yet - this crude instrument was manufactured in large numbers by British and Canadian shipyards, claimed a significant number of U-boat kills, and filled a vital space in the Allies' Battle of the Atlantic, really, throughout the war. The Irish Naval Service acquired three of these vessels around 1943; they continued to form the "backbone" of the Irish Naval Service into the early 1970s, when the last survivor expired due to the lack of spare parts (up to that, the other two had been cannibalised for spares). We really did not take this sort of thing very seriously, did we ? Best regards, JR.