HMS Pargust
| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom
|
|
| Name: | Pargust |
| Launched: | 1907 |
| Commissioned: | 28 March 1917 |
| In service: | 1917-1918 |
| Fate: | de-commissioned Nov 1918 |
| Notes: | Converted to Q-Ship at Devonport |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | collier |
| Tonnage: | 2817 gross tons (GT) |
| Propulsion: | steam |
| Speed: | 7 ½ knots |
| Armament: |
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HMS Pargust was a Royal Navy warship that was active during World War I. She was a Special Service Vessel (also known as Q-ships) used by the RN in anti-submarine warfare. Pargust was active in this role during the last two years of the war, and was successful on one occasion, destroying the U-boat UC-29.
Pargust was built in 1907 as a collier, and was originally named Vittoria. She had an uneventful peacetime career before the start of World War I. In 1917 she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy for conversion into a special service vessel. She was taken in hand at Cardiff, and converted for her new role at the Devonport naval base. The collier was armed with five guns, a 4-inch gun and four 12-pounder naval guns, and two torpedo tubes, all in concealed mountings. She was also fitted with a gun in plain sight; as many merchant ships were defensively armed by this stage of the war, Pargust would have looked suspicious without it. Q ship crews of this period had evolved the strategy of giving a half-hearted defence before abandoning ship thus reinforcing the impression they were just helpless merchantmen. She was manned with a volunteer crew and commanded by Commander Gordon Campbell, who transferred with his crew from Farnborough, another Q ship. She was renamed Pargust and commissioned on 28 March 1917.
Pargust was assigned to special service duty and based at Queenstown, in Ireland and was active on anti-submarine duties in the Southwest Approaches.
On 7 June 1917 Pargust was on patrol west of Valentia Island when she encountered UC-29, which had already sunk three ships in the area. As Pargust approached the U-boat’s position UC 29 fired a torpedo which hit Pargust in the engine room. Campbell made no attempt to avoid this, as he was convinced the only way to allay the suspicions of a U-boat was to allow his ship to be torpedoed, relying on her buoyant cargo to keep her afloat, and obliging the U-boat to surface to finish her off with gun-fire at which point it would be vulnerable to his guns. He had already employed this strategy with Farnborough, and would do so again, in one of the epic Q-ship actions, with Dunraven.
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