HMS Anchusa (K186)

HMS "Anchusa" (K186) was a Flower-class corvette that served in the Royal Navy.

She was launched in 1940 under the crash wartime construction program instituted by the Royal Navy shortly before the capitulation of France. Built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast (one of only 34 Flower-class ships to be built in Northern Ireland), she incorporated a number of improvements to earlier Flower-class ships, that improved her performance in escorting convoys.

She had a relatively small crew of 96, with a displacement of nearly 1,000 tons, but she was mounted with the Hedgehog AS Mortar, which launched depth charges at an enemy submarine far away from the boat itself.

Her surface armament consisted of one 102 millimetre gun, six 20 millimetre cannon on single mounts. Her underwater armament consisted of the aforementioned Hedgehog and seventy depth charges. She was instrumental in damaging German U-boat activities in the channel area and the Atlantic, and was used as mercantile ship after the war, being renamed "Silverlord" in 1949.

She was renamed once more as "Sir Edgar" in 1954, but was lost on January 18, 1960. She was salvaged but subsequently scrapped in Mauritius.

References

* "The World War II Warships Guide", Robert Hewson; (2000), ISBN 1-85605-569-8

* [http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/hague/search3.php?query=Anchusa&Submit=Find+Vessel HMS "Anchusa" on the Arnold Hague database at convoyweb.org.uk.]

* [http://www.oldships.org.uk/SHIPS/SHIP_HTM/Anchusa.htm HMS "Anchusa" on "www.oldships.org.uk"]