HMT Carlton – FY1965 (1916)

HMT Carlton was a British hired steam trawler, built in 1907 and registered at Grimsby as GY270. She was a small vessel of about 267 gross tons, taken into Admiralty service in December 1915 as hired trawler No. 1965. Armed with a single 3-pounder gun, she served as a minesweeper, one of those tough little working boats pushed into the Dover Patrol’s most dangerous work. Not exactly the sort of career move you’d choose from a brochure, but the First World War was not big on employee wellbeing.

On 21 February 1916, Carlton was mined off Folkestone and lost in the Dover Strait. The available naval loss records give the cause as a mine from an unknown source, so I’d avoid confidently naming the U-boat unless you’ve got a local source tying it down. For divers, Carlton is a compact but evocative First World War wreck: a Grimsby fishing trawler turned minesweeper, lost after only a short spell in naval service, in the same brutal Channel waters where small patrol craft worked daily against mines, weather and traffic. Small wreck, hard life, proper Dover Patrol story.