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Age-34

169, Barcombe Avenue, Streatham Hill

Q ships were designed to look like defenceless merchant ships which would lure enemy submarines to attack them on the surface. They would then reveal their hidden guns and engage the submarine. They were called Q ships after their home port of Queenstown in Ireland. There has been a long running debate as to their effectiveness in sinking German submarines with some maintaining that they were a waste of resources, pointing to the fact that minefields destroyed more U-boats. Nevertheless they accounted for 10% of U-boat sinkings.

HMS Bergamot was one of these Q ships but not one that had a very long career. She was an Anchusa class sloop, laid down on 1st January, 1917, launched on 5th May, commissioned on 14th July and sunk on 13th August when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-84 while 70 miles west of Northern Ireland. Fourteen of her crew of seventy were killed including John Stevenson. An idea of the size and shape of HMS Bergamot can be gained from her sister ship, HMS Saxifrage now HMS President, moored on the Thames in London. Wikipedia has an interesting article concerning the sinking of HMS Bergamot.