HMT Saxon Prince – FY262 (1916)

HMT Saxon Prince was a North Shields steam trawler, built by J. T. Eltringham & Co. Ltd at South Shields and completed in January 1907 for Prince Steam Fishing Co. Ltd, with Richard Irvin as manager. She was a steel screw trawler of 237 gross tons, about 36.7 metres long, with a 6.7 metre beam and 3.7 metre depth, driven by a triple-expansion engine built by Shields Engineering & Dry Dock Co. Ltd. In August 1914 she was requisitioned by the Admiralty and converted into minesweeper No. 262, proving once again that the Navy looked at hard-working fishing boats and thought, “that’ll do, send it into danger.”

On 28 March 1916, Saxon Prince disappeared off Dover / Kingsdown in a violent south-westerly Force 12 storm, while serving on Admiralty patrol work. Some records mention possible mining, but the strongest contemporary explanation is foundering in the furious gale. The Maritime Archaeology Trust records that all 12 men aboard were lost, and likely remains now lie in about 22 metres of water, roughly off the cliffs between St Margaret’s Bay and Kingsdown. For divers, this is a small wreck with a hard human story: a former fishing trawler turned wartime minesweeper, lost not to gunfire or torpedo, but to the Channel itself at its most brutal.