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HMS WISHART

       photograph from Navyphotos.co.uk

Click on the links within this brief outline for first hand accounts by the men who served on HMS Wishart and for a more detailed chronolgy see www.naval-history.net

HMS Wishart (D67) was one of two Modified W-Class Destroyers ordered from Thornycroft at Woolston, Southampton, in January 1918 (the other was HMS Witch). Four other V & Ws were built at Thorneycroft's Woolston shipyard on the opposite side of the River Itchen from Southampton. She was launched on 18th July 1919 and named after Admiral Sir James Wishart (1659-1723), Captain of the Fleet at the Battle of Vigo Bay in 1702 and MP for Portsmouth. She was completed in June 1920 and is easily distinguished from other ships of this type by having two funnels of almost equal height.

During the inter-war years she served in the Atlantic Fleet and the Mediterranean and from 1932 on the China Station with the 8th Destroyer Flotilla. On the 14 March 1932 she rescued the crew of the USN Gun Boat USS Fulton when she caught fire while HMS Whitshed stood by to help if needed. HMS Wishart was commanded by Cdr Lord Louis Mountbatten from 1934-6 when she returned to the Mediterranean as part of the First Destroyer Flotilla.

From September 1939 she was based at Gibraltar with the 13th Destroyer Flotilla escorting convoys to Liverpool but in March was transferrred to Freetown, West Africa, for the local escort of Atlantic Convoys. In June 1940 she returned to Gibraltar and operated with H Force escorting carriers flying off aircraft to defend Malta. On 27 June 1941 she sank the Italian submarine, Glauco west of Gibraltar.

In July 1941 she returned to Britain for a refit and conversion to a Long Range Escort (LRE) but because the boiler room arrangements did not allow an increase in her fuel capacity the conversion did not proceed and she remained a high speed Short Range Escort (SRE) with enhanced armament. Cdr. Humphrey Gilbert Scott, RN was appointed CO in September 1941 and Ron Rendle who was aboard HMS Patroclus when she was torpedoed and sunk by U-99 (Otto Kretschmer) joined the crew as as Torpedoman. The photograph of the ship's Company was probably taken at that time. In February 1942 Wishart was adopted by Port Talbot, Glamorgan, after a successful Warships Week National Savings campaign.

After post refit trials she returned to Gibraltar and as part of Force H escorted repeated operations to fly off aircraft to defend Malta. With HMS Wrestler (D35), and aircraft of the Royal Air Force's No. 202 Squadron she sank the German submarine U-74 with all hands east of Cartagena, Spain, in a depth-charge attack on 2 May 1942. In August 1942 she escorted the convoy which broke the blocade of Malta, Operation Pedestal, during which the aircraft carrier, HMS Eagle, was lost.

In November 1942 she escorted convoys to the landing beaches in North Africa, Operation Torch, and was awarded prize money for her help in salvaging the American troopship, Thomas Stone. On 11 December 1942 she rescued survivors from HMS Blean when she was torpedoed by U-443 sixty miles west of Oran. Ten days later she assisted with rescue operations when MV Strathalan was torpedoed on 21 December 1942 with more than 5,000 troops aboard.

Cdr Scott in HMS Wishart was the Senior Officer of the escort for one of the first through Convoy from Gib to Alex after the surrender of Axis Forces in North Africa, Convoy GTX.3, 22 June - 3 July 1943; see his Report of Proceedings, "Only Wishart, Venomous and the trawler Stella Carina were with the convoy for the whole passage from Gib to Alex." A week later on 10 July Wishart with Venomous and HMS Witherington escorted the troop ships to the landing beaches at Augusta in Sicily, Operation Husky.

On 24 February 1944 she took part with HMS Anthony in sinking U-761 which was detected with an airborne Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) by a Catalina flying boat and its position marked with smoke bombs. This is believed to be the first time a u-boat was setected and sunk by this method and the operation was photographed from the air. Throughout 1944 she remained at Gibraltar escorting convoys in the Western Mediterranean and in January 1945 was withdrawn from operational use and returned to Britain, was paid off and reduced to Reserve and then sold for beaking up at Inverkeithing, near Rosyth.

Commanding Officers

Officers

This short list of officers who served on HMS Wishart all have entries on the unithistories.com web site. Further names from the Navy List will be added later.

Who are these men?

The Ship's Company of HMS Wishart
Double click on the image to display full size
The photograph was probably taken after her refit and recommissioning in September 1941 when Cdr. Humphrey Gilbert Scott, RN was appointed CO
The photographs were provided by  Kelly Porter and "Gav Mac" whose Grandfathers, were stokers on HMS Wishart.
Can you recognise any of these men?

Derek Shepherd (on right) was 15 when he enlisted in the Royal Navy. His best friend was Colin Seaman (on the left).  They kept in touch by phone but were not fit enough to attend the reunions of the V & W Association.

I was sent this photograph of AB Samuel Gillan on the left by his son, Frank Gillan, who was eight when his father died in 1960. It was the only wartime portrait he had of his father and all he could tell me about him was that he had served in HMS Wishart and HMS Ladybird, an Insect Class gunboat built in 1916 and torpedoed off Tobruk in 1941. It must have been taken in August 1939 as once the war began, for security reasons, the name of a man's ship was not given on his cap ribbon, just the words HMS Destroyer.

I was fortunate to find two Service Certificate for Samuel Gillan online on the National Archives website and was able to dowload them without charge, a concession during the Covid Pandemic as they normaly costs £3-60 per record. Had he been born a few years later his son would have had to prove his relationship to his father by providing a birth certificate and paid the standard £30 fee charged by the Admiralty for supplying service records. These handwritten records give the shore base for pay and aministrative purposes followed by the name of the ships in which a man served in brackets. They are often difficult to interpret but it appeared that Samuel Gillan had joined HMS Wishart in August 1939 and remained with her throughout the war.

He was a "regular" - not a "Hostilities only" conscript - having "signed  on" for 5 years plus 7 in 1926 when he was an 18 year old labourer born at Rutherglen, Lanarksire, in 1904. After service in HMS Vindictive he had joined HMS Ladybird on the China Station in 1931 when she was based on the Yangste, China's largest river which flowed from west to east and reached the sea at Shanghai. V & W Class destroyers were based at Hankow (Wuhan), the highest point on the Yangste which could be reached by ocean going ships, but HMS Ladfybird, an Insect Class gunboat, and river steamers could reach Yichang (Ichang) a further 400 miles upriver. The story of HMS Ladybird from the Danube to the Upper Yangste and her loss at Tobruk in 1941 is told on John (Dusty) Millers's website and you can read the story of some of the survivors on ww2today.com

In 2020 I recorded an interview with 105 year old Lt Cdr John Manners RN, the last surviving Commanding Officer of a wartime destroyer, HMS Viceroy. Most of the veterans who served in the war have "passed the bar" and more often than not I am contacted by their sons or grandsons who tell their story for them but as memories fade mistakes are inevitably made and Service Certificates provide the basic facts. Frank Gillan agreed that he must have mis-remembered what he had been told by his Mother as a small boy and his father had not been serving in HMS Ladybird in 1941 when she was sunk by German bombers on 12 May but ten years earlier on the China Station, an exotic posting which most sailors enjoyed as thy could live like like kings on a ratings pay. Frank identfied his father as the man to the right of the ships crest in the photograph of the ship's Company and I have enlarged it so that you can compare it with his portrait on the left. This can be viewed full size in a separate window by clicking on the image.