HMT Lydian – 162 (1915)
HMT Lydian, Admiralty No. 162, began life as the Milford Haven fishing trawler FV Lydian, registered as M232. Built in Aberdeen in 1908 by John Duthie / Duthie Torry Shipbuilding Co., she was a steel steam trawler of about 244 gross tons, measuring roughly 36.7 m long with a beam of 6.8 m. Before the war she worked as a civilian fishing vessel under the ownership of S. A. Laycock & Co. of Milford Haven.
During the First World War, Lydian was requisitioned by the Admiralty and converted for naval service. Like many former fishing trawlers, she was well suited to hard, practical work close to shore. These vessels became patrol boats, escort vessels and minesweepers, doing essential work in waters made increasingly dangerous by German submarines and minefields. Lydian’s Admiralty number was 162, and by September 1915 she was serving off the Kent coast.
On 18 September 1915, Lydian struck a German mine off South Foreland, near Dover. Historic England identifies the mine as one laid by UC-6, a German Type UC I minelaying submarine commanded by Kapitänleutnant Matthias Graf von Schmettow. The loss came during a period when UC-boats were laying mines across British coastal routes, including the Dover Strait, Harwich and Yarmouth areas. These small submarines did not need to surface and fight. They laid their mines, left, and let the Channel do the killing later.
The explosion sank Lydian with the loss of eight men. Known casualties include William Charles Crisp, David Thomas Job, James Charles Phillips, Ernest Albert Edward Littlewood, William MacLeod, George More, Edward Ernest Pawley and Philip Eric Wilson. Their backgrounds reflect the human geography of wartime trawler service: Milford Haven, Halesworth, Wick, Stornoway connections, naval reservists, fishermen, engineers, seamen and signalmen pulled into the machinery of war.
The wreck lies about 3.2 km east of South Foreland in around 23 to 24 m of water. Historic England records the site as positively identified, lying roughly NW/SE, with a charted wreck area of about 50 m x 15 m. Artefacts recovered from the wreck include a bell, portholes, an engine-room plate, a lamp and a door light. These finds helped confirm the wreck’s identity and give the site a stronger historical footing than many anonymous Channel marks.
For divers, HMT Lydian is a classic Dover Patrol wreck: small, workmanlike, heavily tied to the mine warfare story of the Dover Strait, and lost in the dangerous coastal zone below South Foreland. She was not a grand warship, but her loss says a great deal about the war at sea in 1915. The Channel was not only a route to France. It was a battlefield, and trawlers like Lydian paid the price for keeping it open.
