HMT Othello II – FY1193 (1915)

HMT Othello II was a Hull steam trawler built in 1907 by Cook, Welton & Gemmell of Beverley, with engines by Amos & Smith. She was built for the Hellyer Steam Fishing Company, part of a fleet famously named after Shakespearean characters, because apparently even trawlers needed a literary education before being sent into a minefield. Requisitioned by the Admiralty in March 1915, she became minesweeper FY1193 and joined the Dover Patrol’s hard-used trawler force. Sources place her at around 206 tons, a small vessel asked to do brutally dangerous work in the Channel.

On 31 October 1915, Othello II was sent to patrol “Section Two”, between the Goodwin Gate and the Gull Lightship, after UC-6 had laid mines there the previous day. In a strong south-south-easterly gale, she struck one of those mines at about 11:55am and sank rapidly. The mine was laid by SM UC-6, commanded by Matthias Graf von Schmettow, the same field that also claimed SS Eidsiva, SS Toward and HMY Aries. Nine men were lost, with a single deck-boy survivor reportedly squeezed out through the wheelhouse window before the vessel went down. For divers, this is a small but deeply powerful Dover Patrol wreck: a fishing trawler turned minesweeper, lost in the same deadly wartime trap as several larger ships, and carrying a human story far bigger than her size suggests.