*Narborough* was built on the Clyde during the First World War, one of a long series of Admiralty M-class destroyers - improved, faster versions of the preceding L class. She displaced 971 long tons, measured 273 feet from stem to stern, drew nine feet of water, and could make 34 knots on her three Parsons turbines. Her armament was standard for the class: three QF 4-inch guns, four 21-inch torpedoes in twin mounts, and a pair of small anti-aircraft guns that were later upgraded to 2-pounder pom-poms. Her complement was 76 officers and ratings. She was named for Rear Admiral Sir John Narborough, an English naval officer who served Charles II, explored Patagonia in the 1670s, and died in 1688 in his late forties. None of his crew would have recognised any part of the ship that bore his name.

*Narborough* joined the 13th Destroyer Flotilla on commissioning, screening Admiral Beatty's battlecruisers in the Grand Fleet. On 31 May 1916, she was one of ten destroyers of the flotilla that fought in the Battle of Jutland - the largest naval engagement of the war and the only major fleet action between the British and German battle fleets. At 16:09 hours, the 13th Flotilla was ordered to attack the German battlecruisers with torpedoes just as the German 9th Torpedo-boat flotilla launched its own attack on the British line. The two destroyer forces blundered into each other in the smoke. The fight that followed was furious - the British destroyer *Nestor* was disabled, the German boats *V27* and *V29* were sunk. *Narborough* did not fire her guns during this clash. Whether by tactical decision or the chaos of the moment, she survived Jutland untouched. Thousands of others, on both sides, did not.

She continued with the 13th Flotilla until November 1917, when she transferred to the 12th, also part of the Grand Fleet, based at Scapa Flow. She was at sea for the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight that November but saw no fighting. On 12 January 1918, *Narborough* and *Opal* were returning to Scapa Flow from a North Sea sweep when a sudden snowstorm reduced visibility to nothing. The North Sea coast of South Ronaldsay is a wall of cliffs running roughly north-south, with no friendly lights showing in wartime, no radar, and no aids beyond dead reckoning and a sounding line. Running at speed in worsening weather, both destroyers struck the cliffs at Hesta Rock north of Windwick Bay almost simultaneously. They were destroyed where they grounded. The wreckage and the men went into the surf at the foot of the cliffs.

Of the 189 men aboard the two ships, one survived. Able Seaman William Sissons - a young rating - managed to reach a rock projecting from the surf and held to it through the freezing night while the storm went on around him. He was found alive the next day when rescuers reached the wreck site. The other 188 were lost, most of them swept out to sea; their bodies were never recovered. They are commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, where the Royal Navy lists its dead with no grave but the sea. Sissons survived to tell the story of two destroyers, two crews, and the night that erased nearly all of them in a few minutes of snow and rock. The cliffs at Hesta are still there. The wrecks lie beneath them, scattered along the foot of the wall they could not see.