British Minesweepers Hms Vestal And Squirrel Positively Identified.

[khall64au]

British Minesweepers HMS Vestal and Squirrel positively identified.

After countless exploratory dives, a team from Deep-Blue Divers in Phuket have finally discovered an artefact carrying undeniable proof of the identity of the Vestal, the last warship to be lost by the British navy at the end of WWII.

Simultaneously the exact postion of the wreck of the sister ship, the HMS Squirrel that sank two days befor ethe Vestal, could also be identified. Both ships were lost during a minesweeping manoeuver in June 1945 close to the island of Phuket in Thailand.

Although both wrecks were identified in 2002 and 2006 as the two sister ships, the true identity of each remained unclear until April 2007. As both ships were Minesweepers of the Algerine-class and therefore structurally identical, the only hints to the identity of each were the records of eye witness reports. According to these we were led to believe that the wreck of the HMS Squirrel was the HMS Vestal. The proximity of this wreck to land fitted the eye witness reports and the assumption seemed to be a logical conclusion based on these reports.

However the latest discovery of a very special object bearing the name and date of production of the Vestal in a completely different location than expected plus newly released information from the British Admiralty National Archives giving very accurate details of the last location of the HMS Squirrel, have allowed us to remedy our assumptions and conclusively identify each of the two wrecks.

Both ships lie to the SW of the holiday island of Phuket in Thailand at depths of 72m (for the Squirrel) and 76m (HMS Vestal).

Source: Deep-Blue-Divers

[sbk]

Interesting, according to the British Minesweepers website the Vestal was sunk by Kamikaze pilots in July of 1945.

http://www.minesweepers.org.uk/badges/page6.htm

I was wondering the fate of the sailors on board the two ships, and found it here on the royal naval association website:

The Squirrel lost 7 men and The Vestal 20 men.