HMS Jervis Bay (F40) - Definition

Career
Ordered:
Laid down:
Launched:	Vickers Ltd, Barrow in Furness 1922 (as SS Jervis Bay)
Commissioned:	October 1940
Decommissioned:
Fate:	Sunk 5 November 1940 in mid-Atlantic
Struck:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	14164 tons
Length:
Beam:
Draught:
Propulsion:
Speed:	15 knots
Range:
Complement:	254
Armament:	Seven 6-inch guns Two 3-inch anti-aircraft guns
Aircraft:	0
Motto:

HMS Jervis Bay was an armed mechant cruiser, pennant F40, sunk on 5 November 1940 by the German pocket battleship DKM Admiral Scheer.

The ship was originally the Aberdeen & Commonwealth Line steamer Jervis Bay named after the Australian bay (the line named all of its ships after bays). She had been taken over by the Royal Navy in August 1939 on the outbreak of the Second World War and hastily armed. She was initially assigned to the South Atlantic station before becoming a convoy escort in May 1940.

She was the sole escort for 37 merchant ships in convoy HX84 from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Great Britain, when the convoy encountered Admiral Scheer. The captain of Jervis Bay, Edward Fegen, ordered the convoy to scatter and closed with the German warship. However the 11-inch guns of the German ship easily outranged Jervis Bay and she was sunk with the loss of 190 crew and Admiral Scheer went on to sink a further 7 ships out of the convoy. The 65 survivors from Jervis Bay were picked up by the neutral Swedish ship Stureholm and Fegen was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.