Authorized as one of nine Tribal-class destroyers under the 1936 Naval Estimates,
Ashanti was the first ship of her name to serve in the Royal Navy. The ship was ordered on 19 June 1936 from
William Denny and was
laid down on 23 November at the company's
Dumbarton shipyard.
Launched on 5 November 1937,
Ashanti was
commissioned on 21 December 1938 at a cost of
£340,770 which excluded weapons and communications outfits furnished by the
Admiralty. The ship's completion was delayed by the late delivery of her gun mounts.
Pre-war Although it was initially intended for all Tribal-class destroyers to visit the land of the people after whom they were named,
Ashanti was one of the few to actually do this. She sailed to
Takoradi, Gold Coast, on 27 February 1939. During the visit, the ship's company was presented with a silver bell and a gold shield by the
Asantehene, the ceremonial leader of the Ashanti, then the
Chief Osei Tutu Agyeman Prempeh II. The ship also accepted visitors from the tribe, many of whom presented good-luck charms and symbols of valour and survival to the ship. In May 1939, the ship went to
France on a good-will visit as part of the
6th Destroyer Flotilla, the Tribal-equipped flotilla of the
Home Fleet. It was in preparation for the threat of war in Europe and for British seamen to make friends with their future allies of the
French Navy. The following month,
Ashanti, as part of the 6th Destroyer Flotilla, attempted to rescue the stricken submarine . Although the submarine was found still intact, salvage attempts failed and only four men were saved when the ship sank with the remaining 99 trapped within.
Second World War On 3 September 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War,
Ashanti and the 6th Flotilla was escorting an Anglo-French squadron of battlecruisers, but
Ashanti spent the rest of the month having damage to her turbine blades repaired. She was forced back to port in March 1940 after
seawater leaked in and mixed with the
boiler feedwater. In April, after repairs were completed, she was deployed in the
North Sea to support operations in
Norway. She achieved little in this capacity, apart from being the target for numerous air attacks by German planes. One attack knocked out her main turbo-generator and the ship's power failed. She managed to zigzag her way out of the
fjord and escape the attackers, and by June she was again in her role of escort and anti-submarine duties. On 10 August, she helped other naval vessels and trawlers rescue more than 300 survivors from the armed merchant cruiser which had been sunk earlier that day by the German submarine some 40 miles to the north of the Ulster coast. When the new
battleship was completed,
Ashanti formed part of her escort to
Scapa Flow. The main threat was mines and
Ashanti, together with four other destroyers, took the lead in a secret, suicidal attempt to detonate any mines that might be in the area. In the darkness, ran aground while at high speed in a murky drizzle.
Ashanti was right behind her and although only doing six knots, struck her, damaging fuel lines on both ships and then
Fame caught fire. The Tribal-class destroyer also ran aground, destroying her
ASDIC dome. Feelings were running high on board as no-one knew the objective of the operation. Matters were compounded as the tide was receding and the destroyers were left beached waiting for high-tide. When high-tide came, the destroyers were swung round onto rocks and damaged even more;
Ashanti was so badly damaged by the rocks, that
Vickers-Armstrongs sent out a repair crew. It took two weeks to refloat
Ashanti and move it to
Newcastle for extensive repairs and hull stiffening. It was almost a year before the ship was ready for action again. Her next major deployment was with other Tribal-class destroyers in
Operation Archery in the
Lofoten Islands in
Norway in December 1941. They cleared out the Germans in
Vågsøy and used the islands as a base from which they attacked German shipping. Shore targets were hit and small German boats were damaged but the operation was abandoned on 28 December after German air attacks on the island's harbour increased. After the raid,
Hitler was convinced that the British were preparing an invasion of Norway, and diverted many precious resources there in preparation for an attack. The Tribal-class vessels were still together and after escorting
Arctic convoys to
Murmansk, they were sent to be part of a huge relief effort to
Malta. They were then sent back to the Arctic to escort more Russian convoys. She, along with the other Tribal-class destroyers, were later re-equipped for this role, with insulation around vital areas to prevent cold weather damage.
Ashanti was an escort for the Arctic
convoy PQ 18 to the
Soviet Union which was attacked by numerous U-boats and German aircraft. Forty-two
Luftwaffe Heinkel He 111 torpedo bombers and thirty-five
Junkers Ju 88 dive bombers simultaneously attacked the convoy, swamping the defenders. U-boats began shadowing the convoy and some were sunk; was sunk by the destroyer , by and by and aircraft from the
escort carrier . Eight ships were sunk on 12 September, on 13 September, the Germans lost five Heinkels to
Hurricane fighters. The tanker was another casualty, being torpedoed on 14 September and abandoned. Later attacks were beaten off at the cost to the Germans of a further twenty aircraft shot down. Two more merchantmen were sunk by air attack in
Murmansk harbour. In total, thirteen merchant ships were lost from the convoy. The return convoy QP-14 was not spared German attack either, it came under attack by .
Ashanti and worked together in hunting the
U-boat, an operation which was hindered by lack of fuel.
Somali, just after replacing
Ashantis position, was torpedoed by the submarine and severely damaged. Most of her crew were evacuated but of the eighty who stayed aboard to save the ship, most were lost when it eventually sank. Five other ships were sunk in the same day, four by , including the
minesweeper . Her next deployment was for
Operation Torch, in which she escorted capital ships in preparation for the invasion of
North Africa. Once the invasion had started on 8 November, she was deployed to prevent any interference from Axis ships in the
Mediterranean. She remained in the Mediterranean Sea until June 1943, when more problems with her feedwater tanks required a major re-fit in the Thames commercial shipyard in the
United Kingdom. After the re-fit, she operated from
Scapa Flow escorting Arctic convoys through the long Arctic nights of late 1943. From 1944, she patrolled the
English Channel in preparation for the
Normandy Landings. In this capacity, she closely co-operated with the Canadian Tribal-class destroyers and . For the invasion, she patrolled the channel and guarded against German surface ships in the
Southwest Approaches and the
Bay of Biscay area. On 9 June, a German destroyer group was found off
Brittany and engaged by
Ashanti,
Huron,
Haida, as well as , , and the Polish destroyers and in the
Battle of Ushant. The
Kriegsmarine ship was driven ashore and wrecked, was severely damaged and , the ex-Dutch destroyer
Gerard Callenburgh, was sunk. Her last action in the war was prevention of the evacuation of German personnel from France. On 5 August 1944, she engaged a German convoy off the
Île d'Yeu and sank two escort minesweepers and a
Patrol Vessel.
Haida was damaged in the engagement.
Ashanti was then taken in for an extensive and expensive re-fit and played no further part in the fighting. Other Royal Navy Tribal-class destroyers were sent to
Asia to fight against the
Empire of Japan. ==Fate==