I would like to dedicate this report to my long suffering wife Marja, who on numerous occasions got out of bed before dawn in order that we could dive on HMS Cricket. Without her help and support HMS Cricket would still be an unknown wreck on Admiralty Chart Number 851.
I thank you Marja.
I have received considerable assistance in researching and compiling this
report from the members of the Dhekelia Sub Aqua Club, the staff of Admiralty
Library, the staff of the Photographic Library of the Imperial War Museum,
the Tyne and Wear Museums Service, the Hydrographer’s Department, the SBA
Customs and SBA Police.
I would particularly like to thank Bryan Booth, my diving partner, Paul
Kemp of the Imperial War Museum, Jane Caderius van Veen for typing this
epic, Angus Beaton for some of the photographs, Chris Beyerman for his
help in the UK and Marja, Jason and Sam for their support.
My special thanks must go to A Cecil Hampshire whose book “Armed with Stings” provided the bulk of the information contained in this report.
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The author Geoff Brown and Bryan Booth after a dive on HMS Cricket. The author first dived the wreck on 4 August 1985 and has now completed 225 logged dives on her...
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| My wife Marja after one of those “Dawn” dives in January. Without her help and support I could not have completed the task... |
The waters around the island of Cyprus glittered red in the sunshine of
an early summer morning as a light breeze ruffled their surface with playful
fingers. It was the summer of 1944 and the second world war still had a
lot of bloody fighting to go through.
The time was not yet 8 am and the morning colours ceremony, by which the Navy marks the official start of its working day, was still seconds away, when the quiet and tranquility of the small bay was shattered by a British warship gliding around the Cape. Suddenly, as if a silent cord had been pulled, the ship came to life. Her ensign was proudly raised as if in salute to her sad charge. She was towing the remains of a gallant little ship, which had for thirty years seen sterling service in three different theatres and two world wars. She was towing it to its final ignominious resting place.
At the end of a stout wire hawser she towed a wallowing craft of peculiar
build, with a low freeboard and twin funnels set oddly abreast in the fashion
of nineteenth-century ironclads. In her heyday this vessel had outsmarted
any millionaire's yacht in appearance, impeccable in her white and buff
enameled paint, scrubbed decks and gleaming brass work. The flags of admirals
had flown from her masthead, and her small squat hull had known the embrace
of many waters. Now she was dirty and rust-streaked, her deck planking
filthy and stained, her outlines blurred by a number of wooden deckhouses
which had obviously been erected to serve the purpose of workshops. Above
her stripped bridge structure reared a stump foremast topped by a rusty
steel crow's-nest. She had long been denuded of guns and mountings, her
engines removed for spares. She wore no ensign and, except for a couple
of bored seamen tending the towing wire on her foredeck, she was empty
of life. With the uncanny prescience of their kind even the rats had deserted
the hulk in which for so long they had lived and thrived.
An hour later the ship stopped engines and the feathery wave bubbling at her bow ceased. The tow line had been cast off and the condemned ship lay heaving on the sea's smooth undulations. Immediately bodies sprang to life and the anchor recently refitted at the busy Naval dockyards in Alexandria broke the still water, cementing her to her last resting place 34E 57' 42" N and 33E 48' 06" E one mile off the south coast of Cyprus known as the Ormidhia Bay.
HMS Cricket after 29 years of gallant service had come to her final resting
place, to be used as target practice for young RAF pilots who had not even
been a twinkle in their mother's eyes when the cricket had first been in
action. The Admiralty had already forgotten her and within one month she
would be at the bottom of the sea, where she would lie as a wreck unknown
for the next 41 years. The last of the Insect class gunboats.
| HMS Cricket 1917 |
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| The Location of HMS Cricket |
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Transits for the Wreck of HMS Cricket
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All rights reserved. No photographs or information appearing here may be
reproduced without permission. Inquiries regarding the photographs or information
appearing here should be directed to the site webmaster. Copyright 2005 - Geoff Brown.
Webmaster: wampit@warstrike.com
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