A Hard Fought Ship

A Hard Fought Ship, The Story of HMS Venomous is the exhaustive and exhilarating story of HMS Venomous, one of sixty-seven V&W destroyers built at the end of the Great War that were to play a key role in the struggle to keep the sea lanes open in the Atlantic, Home Waters, and the Mediterranean during the following war. Her story was perhaps the most memorable of all her class. When war broke out she was to find herself in the front line as the German blitzkrieg swept across Europe in 1940 and the V&Ws made high speed dashes across the Channel to bring troops and civilians back from Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk, and prepared for the expected invasion. Later that year, she and her sister-ships escorted the Atlantic convoys which supplied our Russian Allies with the weapons to halt the German advance. She returned to the Mediterranean and took part in Operation Pedestal to save Malta, and as the Allies prepared for the landings in North Africa she was ordered to escort the destroyer depot ship, HMS Hecla to the invasion beaches. When Hecla was torpedoed off the coast off Morocco, Venomous fought the attacking U-boat and rescued 500 survivors.

Venomous escorted convoys along the coast of North Africa including the first-through convoy from Gibraltar to Alexandria, Egypt. She also joined the invasion force to Sicily during Operation Husky. In October 1943 she returned to Britain for a major refit at Falmouth when she was converted to an air target ship for training Barracuda torpedo bombers based at Douglas, Isle of Man, and then, after being transferred to the east coast, she was nearly lost in a hurricane before being sent to Kristiansand to accept the surrender of German naval forces. Venomous and her sister-ships were all scrapped after the War, but her extraordinary career, during which she fought without cessation, is brought to life in this rousing and beautifully told ship biography, a fitting memorial to the V&Ws and the men who served in them.

Captain John A. Rodgaard (Rtd) took on the writing and the completion of this book after the death in 2007 of the original author John Moore. Before turning to research and writing, he served for 41 years with the U.S. Navy, including 29 years as an intelligence officer. He co-authored A Call to the Sea, the biography of Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution, and is now co-editor of the Trafalgar Chronicle, the yearbook of the 1805 Club, of which he is the chairman.

Robert Moore spent many years in charge of the Sea Cadet Unit TS Venemous, and there acquired his interest in the V & W destroyer. His interviews with the surviving officers and crew formed the basis of the first edition of this book. He died in 2007.