HMS Anchusa (K186)

HMS Anchusa off Liverpool
History
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Anchusa
Namesake	Anchusa
Builder	Harland and Wolff[1]
Yard number	1097[1]
Launched	15 January 1941
Completed	1 March 1941[1]
Identification	Pennant number: K186
Fate	Broken up in Mauritius in October 1960
General characteristics
Class and type	Flower-class corvette
Displacement	1,170 tons (1,390 tons full load)
Length	205 ft (62 m)
Beam	33 ft 2 in (10.11 m)
Draught	15 ft 9 in (4.80 m)
Propulsion	Two boilers driving one VTE engine generating 2750hp
Speed	16.5 knots (30.6 km/h)
Complement	85 to 109
Armament	1 × BL 4-inch (101.6 mm) Mk IX gun 40 × depth charges 72 × Hedgehog rockets

HMS Anchusa (later renamed Silverlord and Sir Edgar) was a Flower-class corvette that served in the Royal Navy.

She was launched in 1941 under the crash wartime construction program instituted by the Royal Navy shortly before the Fall of France. Built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast (one of only 34 Flower-class ships to be built in Northern Ireland), she incorporated a number of improvements to earlier Flower-class ships, that improved her performance in escorting convoys.

She had a relatively small crew of 96, with a displacement of nearly 1,000 tons, but she was mounted with the Hedgehog anti-submarine mortar, which launched contact-detonating depth charges at an enemy submarine far away from the boat itself.

Her surface armament consisted of one 102 mm gun, and six 20 mm cannon on single mounts. Her underwater armament consisted of the aforementioned Hedgehog and seventy depth charges. She was instrumental in damaging German U-boat activities in the channel area and the Atlantic, and was used as a mercantile ship after the war, being renamed Silverlord in 1949.

She was renamed once more as Sir Edgar in 1954, but was lost on 18 January 1960. She was salvaged but subsequently scrapped in Mauritius.

• The World War II Warships Guide, Robert Hewson; (2000), ISBN 1-85605-569-8
• HMS Anchusa on the Arnold Hague database at convoyweb.org.uk.
• HMS Anchusa at www.oldships.org.uk