So, I want you to just picture a standard list
of World War II warships for a second. Okay.
You've got your heavy hitters right at the top,
the battleships, like the Hood, the Bismarck,
the massive aircraft carriers. Right, the ones
that get the movies made about it. Exactly. But
I've been digging through this stack of naval
logs you sent over for this deep dive, and I
think I found something. Well, something weird.
Weird is probably the charitable way to describe
it. I mean, you're looking at the file for HMS
Sharpshooter, right? Yeah. Pendant number J68.
Right, J68. Yeah. And on paper, this is just
a minesweeper. It's small. It's, you know, unglamorous.
But when you actually plot out the timeline,
this ship is sort of the maritime equivalent
of Forrest Gump. Oh, that's a good way to put
it. I mean, it is somehow physically present
at nearly every single disaster, triumph, and
bazaar. bizarre turning point for the Royal Navy
between like 1937 and 1965. It is statistically
improbable. You're talking about a single hole
that starts out, you know, clearing mines in
the English Channel, evacuates Dunkirk, fights
this insane duel with a U -boat in the Arctic
Circle. Right. Invades Sicily and then somehow
survives long enough to hunt for crashed nuclear
bomber prototypes in the Cold War. It's wild.
But there's a catch. And this is the part that
made me stop and actually reread the notes. For
a ship with such a heroic resume, she wasn't
exactly graceful. She had a reputation. She hit
things, like a lot of things. She was definitely
contact heavy. Yeah. But, you know... That's
actually the core of our mission today. We aren't
just recounting battles here. We want to track
the life of this single piece of engineering.
It's just 245 feet of steel, but following it
helps you understand how the Navy itself changed.
Like, how do you take a ship built for 1930s
technology and keep it relevant in the atomic
age? And, of course, why does she keep bumping
into other ships? Well, let's go back to the
drawing board then. It's 1936 Devonport Dockyard.
What was the sharpshooter actually designed to
do? Because the sources mention this Halcyon
class, and they frame it as a pretty major shift
in naval thinking. It was a very necessary shift.
Because before the Halcyons, the British Navy
was really confused about what a minesweeper
should even be. How so? Well, they were building
these things called minesweeping sloops. Basically,
the Admiralty wanted a ship that could sweep
mines, sure. but also patrol the colonies, chase
pirates down, show the flag, and look impressive
in a foreign port. Ah, the classic government
procurement problem. Trying to make one machine
do five completely different jobs. And failing
at most of them. They were too slow for patrol
work and way too big for efficient sweeping.
So the Halcyon class was the Navy finally getting
back to basics. Dedicated minesweepers. Smaller,
cheaper, and totally focused. When you say smaller,
give me the scale here. She's 245 feet long.
with a beam a width of about 33 feet. For comparison,
a destroyer of that era would be significantly
longer and much, much faster. Sharpshooter topped
out at roughly 17 knots. Okay, so not a speed
demon. No, she wasn't built to race. She was
built to have enough torque to pull heavy cutting
cables through the water to physically sever
mine moorings. But I noticed in the specs she
had steam turbines. The design notes say that
was unusual for a sweeper. Why does the engine
type matter so much? It matters for survival.
Most small ships of that era used reciprocating
engines. Think big pistons like a car engine,
but massive. Right. They were reliable, but they
were incredibly noisy, and they vibrated the
whole ship. Sharpshooter had turbines. They were
smoother and, crucially, a lot quieter. And quieter
means it's harder for a submarine to hear you.
That, and it means your own listening gear works
better. If you're trying to use ASDIC, which
was early sonar, to find a U -boat, you don't
want your own engine drowning out the return
ping. Makes sense. So she launches in 36, commissions
in December 37, and she doesn't even get a nice
shakedown cruise before things get really dark.
No, not at all. She's immediately thrown right
into the tension of the Munich crisis in 1938,
mobilizing to scapa flow. But if you look at
the log for June 1939, that's where her first
real trauma happens, the submarine Thetis. Oh,
that was the sub that sank during its sea trials,
right? Yes, in Liverpool Bay. Yeah. It was just
a horrific accident. The sub flooded and couldn't
resurface. Sharpshooter was part of the flotilla
sent to find her. They were searching desperately
while the crew was trapped inside. Wow. So before
the war even officially starts, this crew of
about 80 men is already dealing with a massive
loss of life. It sets a really grim tone for
the ship. And then September 39 hits. War is
declared. She spends the phony war clearing channels.
But then we get to May 1940, Operation Dynamo.
The evacuation of Dunkirk. Right. And I feel
like everyone knows the movie version of Dunkirk.
You know, the little civilian boats, the yachts,
the fishing trawlers. The armada of small ships.
Yeah, exactly. But the logs here paint a much
more industrial picture. Sharpshooter wasn't
just ferrying a few guys at a time. No, she was
a heavy lifter. We have the specific entry for
May 29th. She pulls 69 troops off the beach.
Which practically doubles the number of people
on board. It does. But the next day, May 30th,
is the real test. She goes back in. And this
time she loads 273 men. Wait, pause there. This
is a ship designed for 80 crew. You add nearly
300 soldiers to that. Where do you even put them?
Everywhere. The mess decks, the corridors, the
upper deck. And you have to remember the context.
These men are totally exhausted. They've discarded
their kit. They're terrified. And for the captain,
Lieutenant Commander A .E. Doran, this is an
absolute nightmare of stability. Stability. You
mean the ship tipping. Exactly. Ships are balanced
very carefully. If those 300 men all suddenly
rush to the port side because they see a Stuka
bomber attacking, the center of gravity shifts.
The ship could literally roll over. Oh, man.
And it's in this chaos that we see the first
incident, the start of her reputation as a bumper
car. The first collision. On her third run, heading
outbound, she smashes into the steamer St. Helier.
Ten point sends PM. Now, looking at this, it
feels really easy to blame the captain. Was he
just bad at his job? I don't think that's fair
at all. Yeah. We have to contextualize the environment.
Imagine driving down a highway at night, the
wrong way against traffic, with your headlights
off while people are shooting at you. That's
intense. That was Dunkirk. Were there really
no navigation lights? None. You couldn't risk
the Luftwaffe seeing you. You have hundreds of
destroyers, sweepers, and ferries maneuvering
in shallow water in pitch blackness. Smoke from
the burning oil tanks on shore is obscuring the
moon. Honestly, it's a miracle she didn't hit
five ships. The damage was pretty bad, though.
Catastrophic for the bow. She couldn't sail home.
She had to be towed back to Dover by a tug, the
Foremost 22. That is an 11 -hour tow, completely
helpless, creeping across the channel, just waiting
for a bomber to finish you off. So she survives
that, spends months in repair. But looking at
the specs from the yard, she comes out different.
The Navy didn't waste the downtime. They fitted
her for magnetic mine sweeping. They realized
the Germans were using magnetic triggers. Those
are the mines that exploded when the steel hull
of a ship passed over them, right? Exactly. So
Sharpshooter had to adapt. She gets knocked down.
She gets up smarter. She did some convoy work
in the Western approaches after that. But then,
late 1941, she gets the worst ticket in the lottery.
The Arctic. The romance run. I've read about
the storms up there, but the logs here describe
the cold as an enemy in itself. It sounds almost
alien. It was lethal. We aren't just talking
about being chilly. Spray would freeze on the
guns instantly. Jamming them solid. If you touched
a metal railing without gloves, you left your
skin behind. Brutal. And you're sailing right
past Nazi -occupied Norway, so you have U -boats
and land -based bombers harassing you the entire
way. She's escorting convoys PQ -8, PQ -9, PQ
-10. And this is where we get to the cinematic
climax of her career. March 24th, 1942. Yes,
the U -655 incident. Let's set the scene for
this. So it's evening, about 8 .25 p .m. She's
escorting convoy QP -9. Visibility is incredibly
low, probably sea mist or snow flurries. Suddenly,
the lookout on the forward four -inch gun yells
out. He spots a shape in the water. The report
says two to three cables. For those of us who
don't speak Navy, what is that exactly? A cable
is roughly 185 meters. So we are talking maybe
400 to 500 meters away. That is nothing. In naval
warfare, where engagements can happen at 10 miles,
that is absolute knife -fighting rate. Then it's
a U -boat. U -655. Surfaced. And here's the strange
part. The report notes... There was no one on
the conning tower. They didn't see the sharpshooter
coming? Apparently not. They might have been
charging batteries or venting the boat to get
fresh air, but they were completely caught off
guard. So the captain, Lieutenant Commander David
Lampin, has a split -second decision to make.
He doesn't try to fire torpedoes. You can't.
They're too close. The torpedoes wouldn't even
have time to arm themselves in the water. Oh,
yeah. And the main guns might not be able to
depress low enough or turn fast enough to hit
a target that close. He does the only thing he
can. He yells the order. Emergency full ahead.
Stand by to ram. Stand by to ram. It sounds so
archaic, like something from a Roman galley,
not a... 20th century warship. It is brutal physics.
You are turning your ship into a missile. And
remember, Sharpshooter is not an icebreaker.
She has a standard steel bow. Hitting a pressure
hole, which is high tensile steel designed to
withstand deep ocean pressure, is like driving
your car into a bank vault. You know you're going
to wreck your own ship. But he commits to it.
He commits. The U -boat tries to dive at the
very last second, but it's too late. Sharpshooter
catches her beam on just behind the conning tower.
The violence of that impact. The minesweeper
basically rode up over the submarine. Wow. The
U -boat rolled over, scraped along the hull,
and sank stern first. That's just gone. Instantly.
45 men, no survivors. The sources mention the
debris field was hauntingly empty afterwards.
Just two life buoys and what looked like a canvas
dinghy. That's it. And what about Sharpshooter?
Her bow was completely crushed. Again, they had
to shore up the forward mess deck with heavy
timber just to keep the freezing water out. She
couldn't stay with the convoy. She had to limp
to Iceland entirely alone at slow speed. That
is a terrifying image. Damaged, alone in U -boat
waters, just hoping you don't run into another
one before you make port. It really proves the
toughness of the Halcyon design, though. A lesser
ship might have found it right there. So she
gets patched up again and is back in action by
September for convoy PQ -18. And the notes here
say PQ -18 was an absolute bloodbath. It was
one of the defining battles of the Arctic. The
Germans threw everything at it. Thirteen merchant
ships sunk. But this is where Sharpshooter Schiff's
roles yet again. She goes from a killer to a
lifesaver. She pulled 101 survivors from the
water during that single convoy. Think about
the logistics of that for a second. You have
a crew of 80. You add 101 freezing, oil -soaked
men who have just seen their ships explode. You
have to feed them, clothe them, treat their wounds,
all while you are still fighting off Heinkel
bombers and submarines. It's a humanitarian crisis
happening inside a warship. Exactly. She survives
PQ -18. She turns around to bring convoy QP -15
back home in November. Well, remember what we
said earlier about her being a bumper car? Oh,
here we go. November 27, 1942, she's leaving
the convoy. and she collides with the cargo ship
Empire Snow. At this point, you really have to
ask, is she clumsy or is she cursed? I was going
to ask you that. We have the Dunkirk Collision,
now this. Is this just bad seamanship? It's easy
to judge from a desk 80 years later. But we need
to talk about station keeping. This is a technical
term that sounds incredibly boring, but is actually
terrifying in practice. Unpack that for us. In
a convoy, you have a specific imaginary box relative
to all the other ships. You have to stay in that
box. But you aren't sailing in a straight line.
You're constantly zigzagging to throw off U -boat
aim. So every ship turns 30 degrees starboard
at the exact same moment than 30 degrees port.
And you're doing this in total darkness. Total
darkness, often in fog or gale force winds. And
these ships don't have brakes. They carry massive
momentum. If the ship next to you zigs when they
should have zagged, or if you drift just 100
yards out of position crunch. So it was basically
synchronized swimming in the dark with 10 ,000
ton steel blocks. That is exactly what it is.
Collisions were actually a major cause of damage
during the war. Sharpshooter just seems to have
a real talent for finding the other ships. Well,
that collision sent her back for repairs yet
again. She eventually goes down to the Mediterranean
for the invasion of Sicily, doing mine sweeping
there, finally comes back to home waters in late
44. War ends in 45. And normally, this is where
the story stops. The Royal Navy had thousands
of these little escorts. They didn't need them
anymore. Most were driven straight onto the beach
and cut up for scrap metal to rebuild the economy.
But Sharpshooter survives the call. She does.
She had a good haul, and those steam turbines
were still incredibly useful. So in May 1945,
she goes into Chatham Dockyard, they strip the
guns off, they take out the depth charges, and
she's completely converted into a survey ship.
Mapping the ocean floor. Finally, a peaceful
retirement. Well, peaceful is a relative term
for this particular ship. I see where you're
going. Let's look at the post -war log here,
1946. She collides with the merchant ship Fieldy.
Unbelievable. Then she goes out to Southeast
Asia, Singapore, Borneo. She's actually doing
really valuable work finding wrecks and harbors
so global trade can restart. Vital work. But
then, October 1947. She hits the merchant ship
Celebs. And just for the hat trick, in 1958,
she runs aground in the Bristol Channel and completely
smashes her sonar dome. You have to respect the
resilience, really. She's like a boxer who keeps
walking right into punches, but absolutely refuses
to fall down. In 1953, she does get a rebrand.
She is renamed HMS Shackleton. Which is fitting.
given her time up in the Arctic ice. But the
most fascinating chapter for me is right at the
end of the file. We're in the Cold War now, 1959,
the jet age. This is such a jarring contrast.
You had this ship laid down in 1936 with steam
engines and rivets, suddenly interacting with
the absolute cutting edge of nuclear strategy.
On August 20th, 1959, a prototype Hanley Page
Victor B -2 bomber crashes into the Irish Sea.
The Victor was a V -bomber, looked like a spaceship.
Huge swept wings designed to drop nuclear weapons
on Moscow. This prototype crashing was a massive
national security disaster. The Navy needed to
know why. Was it a design flaw? Pilot error.
Because if the design is bad, the whole nuclear
deterrent is compromised. Precisely. They had
to find the wreckage to steady it. But finding
a crashed plane in the ocean is incredibly hard.
So they send Shackleton. Because she has the
survey sensors. She spends weeks trawling the
seabed looking for fragments of a supersonic
jet. It really highlights how long her career
was. She started out hunting U -boats that ran
on diesel batteries. And she finished by hunting
a jet bomber that could fly at Mach 0 .9. And
true to form, even while she's doing this high
-stakes search, she finds time for one last rescue.
April 1960. She picks up a distress call from
a trawler, the Starbank. Uncontrolled leak. Shackleton
pauses the search, rushes over, transfers her
pumps, and saves the ship. It's like she couldn't
help herself. If there was trouble anywhere nearby,
she was going towards it. It's a very fitting
final act. The end finally came in November 1965.
She was placed on the disposal list and sold
to Bisco. The British Iron and Steel Corporation.
The knacker's yard. She was broken up at Troon,
born in the pre -war tension of the 30s, scrapped
in the swinging 60s. Court of Journey. So when
you look at this whole stack of reports, What
is the big takeaway? Why should you or I care
about one clumsy minesweeper? I think she represents
the Workhorse Navy. We preserve the bill fast
in London as a museum. We look at the big guns
and the heavy armor. But the war wasn't won by
battleships. It was won by these little ships,
the ones that cleared the mines, screened the
convoys, and took the hits. They made the ocean
usable. Right. Without Sharpshooter clearing
the channel, the battleship can't even leave
port. Without her screening the convoy, the foo
doesn't get to Britain. They were small, cramped,
freezing, and utterly indispensable. It also
makes you think about the life of a machine.
We tend to view ships as static objects, just
hunks of metal. But this ship had a real career
path. It had job changes. It had a personality.
A slightly accident -prone personality, sure.
but definitely a heroic one. And it leaves you
wondering, if a random minesweeper like J68 has
a story of this wild ramming subs and hunting
nuclear bombers, what other epic stories are
just sitting in the archives right now, hiding
in the logs of the thousands of minor vessels
that no one ever talks about? That is a very
big question. And definitely one for another
deep dive. Thanks for listening.