Qualla: HMS Curacoa (D41)

HMS Curacoa (D41): Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy official photographer, Public domain. At 14:04 on 2 October 1942, the RMS Queen Mary - 81,000 tons, the largest, fastest ocean liner in the world, carrying 10,000 American soldiers across the Atlantic - struck HMS Curacoa amidships at 28 knots. The cruiser was sliced cleanly in two. The stern section sank in seconds. The forward section stayed afloat just long enough for some of her men to scramble out before it followed. Three hundred and thirty-seven officers and sailors died in the cold water 20 miles north of Tory Island. The Queen Mary did not stop. Under orders that no troopship could ever halt for any reason in U-boat waters, she steamed on toward the Clyde with a damaged bow. The destroyers of her escort, alerted by radio, turned back hours later to pick up the 101 survivors.

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Image: Royal Navy official photographer | Public domain

HMS Curacoa (D41): Twenty-Five Years of Service

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy official photographer, Public domain. Curacoa was already an old ship when she died. Built at Pembroke Royal Dockyard during the First World War, launched on 5 May 1917, she was the fourth Royal Navy ship to bear the name - taken from the Dutch island of Curacao, captured by Britain in 1807. She was a C-class light c...

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Image: Royal Navy official photographer | Public domain

HMS Curacoa (D41): Converted for a New War

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Basher Eyre, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1933 she became a training ship. In July 1939, two months before the world went back to war, she entered Chatham Dockyard for a thorough conversion into an anti-aircraft cruiser. Her old armament came out. Replacements went in: high-angle guns and pom-poms designed to keep Ger...

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Image: Basher Eyre | CC BY-SA 2.0

HMS Curacoa (D41): The Rendezvous

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. On the morning of 2 October 1942, Curacoa met the Queen Mary north of Ireland. The liner was on the second leg of one of her wartime crossings - New York to the Clyde, carrying approximately 10,000 American troops of the 29th Infantry Division, the division that would land at Oma...

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Image: USN | Public domain

HMS Curacoa (D41): The Wrong Assumption

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy official photographer, Public domain. Each captain believed his ship had right of way. Boutwood thought the liner would alter course around him; Captain Cyril Illingworth of Queen Mary thought the escort should keep clear. At 13:32, during one of the zig-zags, Queen Mary's officer of the watch saw the cruiser closing...

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Image: Royal Navy official photographer | Public domain

HMS Curacoa (D41): Three Hundred and Thirty-Seven

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal Navy official photographer, Public domain. The cruiser was cut in two. The aft section sank almost immediately. Men in the forward end had perhaps two minutes before it followed. Three hundred and thirty-seven officers and sailors went down - young men, mostly, whose names are on the Chatham and Portsmouth Naval Memorials...

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Image: Royal Navy official photographer | Public domain