HMS Effingham (D98)

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Career

Ordered:
Laid down:	6 April 1917
Launched:	8 June 1921
Commissioned:	2 July 1924
Fate:	Wrecked off Bodø, Norway, May 18, 1940
Struck:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	12,800 tons
Length:	605 ft (184.4 m)
Beam:	65 ft (19.8 m)
Draught:
Propulsion:
Speed:	29.5knts
Range:
Complement:	690 (standard), 800+ (wartime)
Armament	9 × 6", 6 × 21" TT
Armor:	11.5" main belt
Motto:

HMS Effingham was a Hawkins-class heavy cruiser of the Royal Navy. She was commissioned at Portsmouth in 1925, having had her construction halted for several years following the end of the First World War in 1918. She was named after Lord Howard of Effingham, one of the leaders of the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1587.

She had a displacement of 12,800 tons, was 605 feet long with a 65 ft beam, and carried a complement of 690 officers and men. She carried seven 7.5" guns, along with anti-aircraft weaponry and six torpedo tubes. This was later modified to nine 6" guns.

Effingham served as flagship of the Far Eastern Squadron between 1925 and 1932, before being placed as the flagship for the reserves on her return. Following the outbreak of the Second World War she patrolled the Northern Atlantic, in the Iceland region, and also transported £2 million in gold reserves to Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. She hunted German surafe raisers on her return, and this led her to be in Norwegian waters during the German invasion. During this period, she was attacked by a submarine but not hit, continuing to bombard German positions in the hills around Narvik until May, when she escorted a troop convoy to Bodø.

It was whilst she was on transport escort duties that she was lost on 18 May, when she stuck on a large rock in the area of Bodø (Bliksvær). The rock was well known and marked on the ship's charts, but when the navigator had drawn the ship's passage onto the map, his pencil mark had obscured the obstacle directly in the ship's path. Fortunately, no one was killed in the wreck, which was destroyed with a torpedo from an accompanying destroyer on 21 May after all her crucial papers and equipment had been removed. The ship rolled onto her side, leaving much of her flank above water and the masts and funnel level with the surface. The more accessible parts of the ship were scrapped post-war, but parts of the wreck are still in place.

During her brief war service, she was awarded the battle honours:

Atlantic 1939-1940
Norway 1940

She is the only ship of the Royal Navy to have borne the name Effingham, but it was bestowed upon a shore installation for the training of naval special forces in 1943.