HMS Redpole or HMS Morning Star

Additional Research Required
Original research conducted by Gerry Costello A number of Royal Navy service records for ratings administered by the Depot ship HMS Blake show two destroyer names across the dates of the Battle of Jutland. Further research has been conducted relating to the history and programmes of the relevant destroyers in order to seek to understand whether each man was serving in a Jutland ship. This note analyses each combination, and attempts to draw conclusions which can be used to support assignment of each man to a particular crew list.

In general what seems to have happened is that the older Acorn-class destroyers were progressively replaced by the new M-class destroyers as they emerged from build. The Acorns had formed the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla (DF), while the new Ms became the 11th DF but both flotillas used HMS Blake as depot ship. Once the Acorns had reached Devonport, they stayed there for a variable time before deploying to the Mediterranean, typically joining the 5th DF based on HMS Blenheim, although some are indicated as joining ‘the Adriatic squadron’. Records indicate that the 2nd and 11th flotillas were with the Grand Fleet, so presumably HMS Blake was based at Scapa Flow. In each case, sailors’ records show continuity of the depot ship, so it is deduced from this that men changed from old to new destroyers at Scapa, and spent little or no time at Devonport.

BLAKE (REDPOLE/ MORNING STAR)
HMS Redpole was an Acorn-class destroyer attached to the 2nd DF. In September 1915 she is one of a number of ships of the class transferred as tenders to HMS Vivid (Devonport), and in December 1915 she is formally transferred to the 5th DF (Depot ship: HMS Blenheim) in the Mediterranean.

HMS Morning Star was completed in August 1915 and was one of the founding members of the 11th DF.

It therefore seems likely that any ratings whose service records show Blake (Redpole/Morning Star) would have transferred to the latter named ship in around Aug/Sep 1915 and would therefore have been in Morning Star at Jutland.


 * 1) HMS Morning Star Crew List (updated in Real-time)