HMS Sabre was an Admiralty S-class destroyer of the Royal Navy launched in September 1918 at the close of World War I.

[1] At the outbreak of the war Sabre was part of the Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow, as a TB Target and PV ranging vessel.

On 13 October 1939 while at Rosyth, Sabre was severely damaged when rammed by the armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay and was under repair until 6 May 1940.

Sabre had made more round trips than most and brought back to Dover a total of 5,765 soldiers – amongst the highest number for any individual ship.

It began with the evacuation of Cherbourg and continued for the next ten days, moving south to St Nazaire, Bordeaux and right down to the Franco-Spanish border.

A Finnish merchant ship, Elle, 3,868 tons was torpedoed at 4:25 a.m. on 28 August and Sabre joined the hunt for the German U-boat U-101 without success.

Then two days later, during the evening of 30 August off Malin Head, Sabre helped rescue the survivors of a torpedoed Dutch ship, the 15,434 ton Holland America line, SS Volendam.

Recently she had been badly damaged in an attempt to rescue the crew of the Dutch ship, SS Stolwijk, which had run ashore on Tory Island on the northwestern coast of Ireland in a full gale.

In March 1942 after a successful ‘Warship Week’ National Savings campaign Sabre was adopted by the civil community of Bebington, Cheshire, the same month she was detached for escort of the Russian Convoy PQ 13 during its initial stage of passage to Iceland in the Northwest Approaches.

At the end of the Second World War Sabre was placed on the disposal list and sold to be broken up for scrap in November 1945, arriving at the breaker’s yard at Grangemouth on the Firth of Forth in 1946.