HMS Valerian was a Flower Class sloop completed in 1916, and used in European waters for the remainder of the First World War.

On December 29, 1920, she recommissioned for service on the North America and West Indies Station, based at Bermuda. On January 7, 1921, Commander Hugh Turnour England, seven other officers and 98 ratings took HMS Valerian from Devonport, trailed by sister-ship HMS Wistaria, crossing the Atlantic southwestward, turning northward through West Indies, and arrived at Bermuda for the first time on April 2l. Also based at Bermuda were the 8th Cruiser Squadron (flagship HMS Calcutta, HMS Calliope, HMS Cambrian and HMS Constance), surveying sloop HMS Mutine, oiler RFA Cherryleaf and various drifters, tugs, and the victualling department steam tank vessel Creole.

The peacetime activity of the station’s ships was cruising, showing the flag at British and foreign ports, rendering aid and taking part in cultural exchanges. After cleaning, maintenance and repairs, and gunnery practice, HMS Valerian left on May 12, arriving at New Brunswick on May 14. She visited various localities in Canada and Newfoundland, returning to Bermuda on July 14. She undertook a southern cruise later that year and then cruised north from May 1921 to July 17.

At 6am on October 21, a hurricane, said to be the worst in a quarter century, struck with little warning and raged for eight hours, damaging many buildings, including the Bermuda Militia Artillery barracks at St George’s and the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps armoury in Hamilton. Commander England attended a function at Prospect Camp the night before and, not liking the weather (surf crashing on Devonshire’s South Shore was heard from the North Shore), returned to Dockyard. By 8am, winds reached 120mph at Prospect, and 180mph at Dockyard.

HMS Mutine fought the storm, steaming the harbour. HMS Capetown (which replaced HMS Calliope) was safe in the submerged dry dock. HMS Constance tore free her bowlines. HMS Dartmouth fought a fire and lost part of her mast. HMS Cambrian had returned to England, to be replaced by HMS Curlew in December.

HMS Valerian had been in dry dock from September 7 to September 16 and was preparing to depart the next day, but lost her main mast and wireless aerial, and a hawser sliced through her bulwark. A child was killed by roofing, and stoker John Joseph Linehan of HMS Capetown drowned at Dockyard. HMS Valerian sent a skiff, and a cook named McKenyon dived overboard but was unable to save Linehan.

HMS Valerian spent 1923 and 1924 peacefully, visiting West Indies, the US and Canada, returning to Bermuda between cruises. The sloop avoided a tropical storm that passed the island on September 3, and was safe at Quebec when the fourth hurricane of 1923 hammered Newfoundland and the Maritimes.

1925 saw the first Category 5 hurricane. HMS Valerian recommissioned in Bermuda on July 22 under Commander William Arthur Usher, leaving Bermuda, with HMS Wistaria, on August 1 to represent the Royal Navy at the International Maritime Tennis Tournament at Bar Harbor, Maine, against four US Navy vessels. Valerian and Wistaria then proceeded to Canada and Newfoundland. Valerian departed Halifax on the October 16 for Baltimore, Maryland, to assist Britain’s Schneider Trophy air-racing team from October 20 to 26.

A storm struck during the races, with 85mph winds at New York and 45mph at Quebec. Sixteen were killed by tornadoes in Alabama, a woman was blown to her death from a fifth-floor window in New York, and hundreds of homes were destroyed in Massachusetts. In Baltimore, flying halted, seven US Navy seaplanes were wrecked. Britain’s Supermarine S 4 was struck by a pole, and its hangar was flattened. The repaired S 4 crashed on October 23. Valerian recovered its engine on October 26 before departing for Bermuda.

The first hurricane of 1926 struck the Bahamas on July 25, killing more than 268 and causing $8 million in damages. HMS Valerian left Halifax on August 3 to render aid, arriving at Nassau on the 8th, leaving on the 14th for Gun Cay, then Miami, Florida, before returning to Nassau. She departed on the 21st, returning to Bermuda on the 25th, and left the following day to resume her northern cruise. Sub-Lieutenant Ronald Brinsley Summerford, assigned to her from the 20th, would have caught up with her in Canada after crossing the Atlantic on the steamer SS Montcalm, which arrived at Montreal on September 17.

HMS Valerian returned to Bermuda on the October 4, leaving the same day for Nassau in the aftermath of the second hurricane to strike the Bahamas that year, which killed at least 17 and caused considerable damage. HMS Valerian arrived on the 7th. A tropical depression formed near Panama on the 14th, becoming the tenth hurricane of 1926 on the 18th, as Valerian left Nassau.

Coal being short there, she carried little, reducing her stability. The hurricane struck Cuba on October 20 with 150mph winds, killing more than 600. It weakened, but covered more than 720 miles in one day. When it was 700 miles from Bermuda on October 21, HMS Valerian was 500 miles nearer and expected to be safe in Dockyard before gale-force winds arrived.

HMS Valerian saw no evidence of a storm at 8.30am on the 22nd when signalling from five miles off Gibbs Hill. By the time she reached Five Fathom Hole, conditions were too dangerous to pass through to safety. Entering Castle Harbour would also have been suicidal. The Royal Navy had barred its vessels from there since the frigate HMS Cerberus was lost navigating Castle Roads in 1783.

Light in the water and caught between the reefs and the approaching storm, Usher took the only course left, steaming southeastwards, into the wind and sea, putting sea-room between the sloop and the shore.

Usher was in radio contact with Captain John Henry Vanstone of the freighter SS Eastway, 60 miles westward, bound from Virginia to Brazil, who said he intended to “cut across the face of the hurricane” and asked Usher’s intentions. Usher replied he would “turn face”. The last transmission HMS Valerian received from SS Eastway was at noon: “Eastway. Assistance required immediately. Latitude 31.25 north 64.15 west”.

Despite her condition, HMS Valerian contended with wind and waves for more than five hours. After the eye passed at midday, more powerful winds at the aft of the hurricane now came from the northwest while mountainous seas still came from the opposite direction. Turning into the wind risked being overwhelmed or running aground, so the sloop was kept heading southeast.

Just before 1pm, she was struck by furious squalls that tore off the main mast and wireless aerial and drove her on to her starboard side until her smoke stacks flooded, bursting her boilers. Those who got clear faced a new ordeal. Usher clung to a raft with 27 others in frigid winds. He would report “the 12 hours of night, with waves breaking over us, were an experience never to be forgotten and many gave up during that time. They got slowly exhausted and filled up with water and then slipped away. The raft was slowly losing its buoyancy and as everyone wanted, as far as possible, to sit on the edge, it capsized about every 20 minutes, which was exhausting; we all swallowed water in the process and the effort of climbing back again began to tell. Twelve held out until the end.”

HMS Curlew left Jamaica on the 18th and was also caught offshore. In Dockyard at 1pm, as HMS Valerian was being overwhelmed, the winds reached 138mph, destroying the anemometer. HMS Wistaria (in the submerged dry dock), oiler RFA Serbol (which replaced RFA Cherryleaf), tugboats St Abbs and St Blazey, and the Creole weathered the storm safely.

Somewhat protected in the fortified north yard, HMS Capetown still tore two bollards from the wharf. In the more exposed south yard, HMS Calcutta was secured with 40 hawsers, but all snapped and she was driven between the ends of the two arms, into the Great Sound, where she would have come to grief. Fortunately, when her bow anchor was dropped, her stern swung downwind, bringing her starboard flank against the northern arm on to which Executive Officer Commander Henry Bradford Maltby and 50 others flung themselves to tie her, while sub-lieutenants Stephen Roskill, of HMS Wistaria, and Conrad Byron Alers-Hankey, of HMS Capetown, swam bowlines across the camber.

HMS Constance had gone to England. Her replacement, HMS Colombo, had left Sheerness on July 26, but was cruising around South America, and not due to arrive at Bermuda until November 1. HMS Ormonde, which had replaced HMS Mutine, had been surveying in West Indies, and departed Trinidad on the 20th for the Strait of Malacca.

With the realisation that HMS Valerian was not responding to signals, HMS Curlew was ordered at 4.10pm to attempt to make contact with her.

At 5pm, Eastway’s captain was washed overboard. By 6pm, her cargo (or bunkers) had shifted, causing a list. One lifeboat remained usable.

At 6.40pm, Commander-in-Chief Vice-Admiral Sir Walter Henry Cowan ordered HMS Curlew to continue the search for HMS Valerian, despite having received Eastway’s plea for help at 5.52pm, as SS Luciline and SS Fort George advised they were going to Eastway’s aid. HMS Curlew signalled Cowan at 6.41pm that she was heading towards Eastway.

Eastway signalled at 18.45, “W/T signals are weak. Am shorting with water here. Cannot last long old man. Am listing more every few minutes. Port lifeboats gone. Urgent assistance required. Radio giving out and stokehold flooding”. Cowan signalled Curlew at 6.54pm to cancel his previous instruction and continue towards Eastway, but cancelled this instruction at 19.00, when he ordered HMS Curlew to recommence her search for HMS Valerian. It was at this moment that Eastway sank. With only one lifeboat available, her firemen and stokers remained at their stations, as did wireless operator Ralph Janes, sending distress signals as the ship went down. Twelve men took to the remaining lifeboat.

At 8.03pm, Cowan instructed Capetown to join the search for Valerian. The next morning, Capetown recovered the first two survivors from a raft at 31.59 north, 64.45 west. A total of two officers and 17 ratings would be rescued by 11.33am, the only survivors.

Eighty-four of her crew went down with HMS Valerian. An hour later, SS Luciline rescued Eastway’s 12 survivors (who said that another ship had ignored their signals) and took them to St George’s. Eastway was reported to have lost 23 from a crew of 35, but her owners listed 39 crew members who had signed on at Antwerp, including 13 coloured (evidently Arab) firemen and trimmers from Cardiff and a Russian who were not named.

• Seán Pòl Ó Creachmhaoil is a Bermudian military historian and the author of Fortress Bermuda: A Visitor’s Guide to the Naval and Military Heritage Sites of the Imperial Fortress Colony of Bermuda and Aquatic Bermuda: The Islands as Seen from the Water. See his website, angloatlantichistory.com