HMS Hereward (1941): Shipwreck Map, Location & Facts

Name	HMS Hereward	Wikidata label
Year lost	1941	Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier
Era	Second World War	derived from year
Ship type	destroyer	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	War action	Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flag	United Kingdom	Wikidata P8047 country of registry
Operator	Royal Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	World War II	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	Sea of Crete	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coast	Greece	Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 5 km from land
Position	35.3333, 26.3333	Wikidata P793 significant event, coordinate qualifier (CC0)

About the wreck

HMS Hereward, named after Hereward the Wake, was a H-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s. She was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and spent four months in Spanish waters during the Spanish Civil War in mid-1937, enforcing the arms blockade imposed by Britain and France on both sides of the conflict. When Second World War began in September 1939, the ship was in the Mediterranean but was shortly transferred to the South Atlantic to hunt for German commerce raiders and blockade runners, capturing one of the latter in November. Hereward was transferred to the Home Fleet in May 1940 and rescued Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands after the Germans had invaded.

The ship was transferred back to the Mediterranean Fleet later that month and escorted convoys to Malta and larger ships of the fleet. She sank an Italian submarine in December before sinking the Italian torpedo boat Vega the following month. Hereward took part in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and assisted in evacuate Allied troops from Greece in April. In May, the ship sank several small ships in a German convoy attempting to land troops on Crete.

Location

Recorded position: 35.3333, 26.3333 (Wikidata P793 significant event, coordinate qualifier (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: Sea of Crete
Nearest coast: Greece

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Hereward (H93) (revision 1379011921), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.