E Coast R.N. Named Ships

[E28]

How about 2 for the price of none?

As the open bridge with its merits or otherwise prevails let's do some more open bridge antics with this subject about 12 miles up the Yorkshire Esk.

We have already visited one Ton class sweeper, Rennington, where these coastal craft were designed in the early 1950's and constructed using predominantly aluminium and non ferrous metals for their superstructure and hull frame which was then planked with mahogany.

But that is only half the story. At the same time a mine hunter was also designed and developed with Thornycroft, who took the design and build lead for all these vessels, and in 1952 had contracts to build the first 3. These hunters would differ from the Tons in being of composite construction, in the same manner the composite inshore Ley class differed from the Hams.

The 3 new coastal hunters were named for villages ending in Thorpe with Ainthorpe 12 miles up the Yorkshire Esk being amongst this trio.

This patently is not Ainthorpe as the entire Thorpe plan was cancelled for myriad reasons in march 1953, mainly trouble with new mine hunting sonar, but a Ton sweeper sans pendant number which will have looked similar.

Why 2 for the price of none? Just west of Ainthorpe is Castleton which was another Ton which saw no white ensign service either and not named for that specific village anyway.

Oh yeah. The Thorpe trio were Ainthorpe, Bilsthorpe and Cutthorpe. Or would have been, later 18 Tons were converted to hunters. With enclosed bridges.

[Hornbeam]

Difficult to say which Town called Castleton the Minesweeper was named after as there are numerous Castleton(s) in England along with numerous Castleton(s) in the USA which RN had connections with due to a Lend/ Lease 4 Stacker which was scrapped in the late 1940’s
Castleton in Indiana was apparently presented with the Ships Bell by the Admiralty as a reverse gift bearing in mind as far am aware the Minesweepers came under the Marshall Aid Plan as GB was broke due to paying off the huge debt we owed the US which was.completed not that long ago.

[E28]

Let's stick with Castleton for this despite a rather tenuous connection and the lend lease US destroyer transferred and commissioned in Halifax 9 sept 1940 as one of the 50 we acquired in the destroyers for bases deal with Castleton amongst the original 8 all initially keeping their US names, in this case Aaron Ward and not until the 17 sept were they renamed. There are at least 7 Castletons in the UK, the ships badge being an illusion to a castle and incorporating a white 5 pointed mullet, or star, this feature incorporated in all these destroyers badges. Castleton was adopted by the borough of Clitheroe, lancs following warship week 21-28 march 1942.

At sea on 19 november 1941 Castleton suffered a most unusual event when 1 of her scuttling charges detonated killing 1 man, this the same day as the Australian cruiser Sydney was sunk with her entire complement off west Australia by the German auxiliary Kormoran mutually destroyed in this action.

Here she is alongside early 1942 after a refit putting on a pretty impressive display of flags from her foremast where the ships bunting tosser must be using every flag from their lockers, maybe they are all airing or is there some attempt at Nelsons famous England expects from Trafalgar signal.

[Hornbeam]

Dug out a photo from my time at Vernon, the Sweeper on the left is HMS Gavinton (Red “V” Fleet) this was the vessel that was towed by a Helicopter, the right hand Sweeper had just been built and was on her way around to GiB with a scratch Crew off Vanguard to be brought up to Tranche 2.
The middle Sweeper was also one of the Red “V” Fleet, somewhere I have a photo of HMS Deepwater which was also alongside Vernon, from an Engineering point of view a very interesting vessel propulsion wise.



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