HMS Hereward (H93)

HMS Hereward, named after Hereward the Wake, was a H-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s. She was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and spent four months in Spanish waters during the Spanish Civil War in mid-1937, enforcing the arms blockade imposed by Britain and France on both sides of the conflict. When Second World War began in September 1939, the ship was in the Mediterranean but was shortly transferred to the South Atlantic to hunt for German commerce raiders and blockade runners, capturing one of the latter in November.Hereward Hereward was transferred to the Home Fleet in May 1940 and rescued Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands after the Germans had invaded.

The ship was transferred back to the Mediterranean Fleet later that month and escorted convoys to Malta and the larger ships of the fleet. She sank an Italian submarine in December before sinking the Italian torpedo boat Vega the following month. Hereward took part in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and assisted in evacuate Allied troops from Greece in April. In May, the ship sank several small ships of a German convoy attempting to reach land troops on Crete. Later that month, she was bombed and sunk by German dive bombers as she assisted in the evacuating Allied troops from Crete. Her survivors and a number of evacuees were rescued by Italian vessels and became prisoners of war.