HMT Cayton Wyke (1940)

HMT Cayton Wyke was a British steam trawler built in 1932 by Cochrane & Sons of Selby, originally a fishing vessel before the Admiralty purchased her in August 1939 and converted her into an anti-submarine trawler. Sources give her tonnage slightly differently, with 550 tons in Naval-History and Historic England, while some trawler lists place her nearer 373 to 375 gross tons, so I’d avoid putting the tonnage in bold neon until you’ve checked Wrecksite or Lloyd’s Register. Either way, she was a tough little patrol vessel doing dangerous work in the Dover Strait, where small ships were expected to face mines, aircraft, U-boats and E-boats with very little room for error. Civilisation, naturally, rewarded this by giving them the worst jobs afloat.

On 8 July 1940, Cayton Wyke was sunk off Dover, close to the South Goodwin Lightship, after being hit by a torpedo from a German E-boat, commonly identified as S-36. Naval-History records her as lost by surface-craft torpedo, while shipwreck lists state that all 18 crew were lost. She also has a notable earlier wartime footnote: in October 1939, she helped HMS Puffin sink the German submarine U-16 near Dover. For divers, Cayton Wyke is a compact but powerful Channel war wreck: a former fishing trawler turned hunter, lost in the knife-edge summer of 1940, when the Dover Strait was less a sea lane and more a firing range with tides