HMT Corona – FY1137 (1916)

HMT Corona was a British hired naval trawler, built in 1912 by Dundee Shipbuilding Co. Ltd and registered at Grimsby as GY684. She was a small working vessel of about 212 gross tons, taken into Admiralty service in February 1915 as hired trawler No. 1137. Naval-History records her armament as one 6-pounder and one 2-pounder gun, which is a polite way of saying a fishing trawler had been handed weapons and sent into one of the most dangerous minefields in Europe. Humanity does enjoy giving impossible jobs to boats with the build of a dockyard terrier.

On 23 March 1916, Corona struck a mine off Ramsgate / in The Downs, believed to have been laid by the German minelaying submarine UC-6, commanded by Matthias Graf von Schmettow. Wrecksite and naval loss summaries record 13 lives lost, with the position often given around 51°08’50″N, 1°25’00″E. For divers, this is a compact but atmospheric Dover Strait war wreck: a requisitioned trawler, a UC-boat minefield, and a loss tied to the same deadly Channel campaign that claimed several merchantmen and patrol vessels in 1916. Small wreck. Heavy story.