Tragic tale of HMS Trinidad, the ship that torpedoed itself
My great grandfather is on old sea dog, having served in the Navy during the Second World War.
He is usually quite chatty, but when I told him recently that I was going on a holiday of a lifetime to Trinidad, he went rather quiet.
“Oh, the poor men on that ship... dreadful,” is all he said.
I take it a ship called the Trinidad was lost during the war, but I didn’t want to push grandad as it was obviously bringing back some bad memories for him. So what happened, Queries Man? – R.
The royal crown colony-class cruiser, HMS Trinidad, came to a tragic end, and will be forever known as “the ship that torpedoed itself”. In March, 1942, Trinidad was on escort duty with an Arctic Convoy heading for Russia.
The ever-present threat of attack by the German Air Force and U-boats must have preyed on the minds of the 800 men on board, and the awful Arctic Ocean weather could only make matters worse.
Suddenly, Trinidad came under attack from three German destroyers. She hit and destroyed the cruiser Z26 and then launched three of her torpedoes.
Unfortunately, two froze in their launch tubes and the third had a faulty gyro mechanism – probably due to the icy Arctic waters.
The faulty torpedo came full circle, and struck the Trinidad. Thirty-two crewmen were killed in the blast.
One survivor was composer George Lord, a Royal Marines bandsman, who had written the ship’s march. This was performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2013, in the presence of the last surviving crewman from HMS Trinidad.