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Age-39

4, Brigade Place, Greenwich

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.

One of these Q ships was HMS Rhododendron, an Anchusa class corvette, launched in October, 1917 and sunk seven months later. On 5th May, 1918 she was hit by a torpedo from the German submarine U-70 when twelve miles north of Fool Craig in the Orkneys, which killed four of her crew. However, these ships, with many water-tight compartments, were designed to stay afloat and in these circumstances the plan would be to send off a ‘panic party’ in one of the ship’s boats, a move designed to fool the submarine, bring her close to the supposedly stricken vessel at which stage the hidden guns would be revealed and the submarine fired on. However on his occasion this did not happen and the whole crew were ordered to abandon the ship and in the confusion eleven men were drowned. The submarine then fired several shells into HMS Rhododendron but she did not sink until the following morning. William Cranfield was one of the crew who did not survive this incident.