HMS Jervis Bay’s Last Stand Against A Pocket Battleship, 1940 - Animated

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:08]It is late afternoon on the 5th of November 1940 in the cold emptiness of the North Atlantic. Convoy HX84 is steaming east for Britain. 38 merchant ships spread across the ocean in ordered columns, their hordes filled with the food and the fuel the country cannot do without. At their side sills HMS Jervis Bay, an armed merchant cruiser already old, lightly armed, and hopelessly outmatched by any modern heavy warship.

[00:00:39]For the moment though, the sea is calm.

[00:00:42]Then on the horizon, a shape appears.

[00:00:45]Far out to port, a lookout aboard Jervis Bay sightes a warship closing in through the fading light. It is Admiral Sheer, one of Germany's most dangerous commerce raiders, armed with heavy guns and built to tear apart convoys too weak to defend themselves. Captain Edward Fan does not have long to think. The alarms sound.

[00:01:09]Orders go out to scatter the convoy and make smoke around him. Merchant captains begin turning away into the gathering dusk. Ahead lies a fight. Jervis Bay cannot win, but may still delay long enough for the others to escape.

[00:01:46]It is November 1940 and in the air the Battle of Britain had been won.

[00:01:53]At sea, Britain's position was still less secure.

[00:01:58]Every week, convoys cross the North Atlantic carrying food, fuel, munitions, and raw materials, while Ubot and German surface raiders tried to stop them before they reached Britain.

[00:02:11]A single convoy attacked in mid ocean meant more than sunken ships. It meant lost cargo, delayed sailings, diverted escorts, and more pressure on a country still fighting from an island. Late that year, that danger had sharpened.

[00:02:28]Grand Admiral Eric Rder, commander-in-chief of the German Navy, had several armored warships available for attacks against the Atlantic trade.

[00:02:38]Admiral Shere, the battle cruisers Naiseno and Shanho, and the heavy cruiser Hippa. These were not commerce raiders of the previous war. They had long range oil, fuel, and reconnaissance tools that could force the Admiral T to react far beyond the point of contact.

[00:02:58]One raider did not need to destroy a whole convoy to cause damage. It could scatter sailings, poor escorts out of position, and make every ocean route feel suddenly exposed.

[00:03:10]Among the ships tasked with protecting Atlantic convoys against that threat was HMS Jervis Bay, commanded by Captain Edward Fogerty Fagan.

[00:03:20]Fagan had served throughout the previous war, and in March 1940, had been given command of the ship.

[00:03:28]Jervis Bay was not a purpose-built warship. She was an 18-year-old converted merchant liner armed with seven 6-in guns, and she had no realistic chance in a jewel with a German surface raider. Her purpose was different. If a raider did appear, she was to shield the convoy for as long as she could, but the convoy came first. In the weeks before HX84 put to sea, German service operations were tightening the pressure.

[00:03:59]On the 23rd of October, the heavy cruiser Admiral Shir left Linia in the Baltic.

[00:04:05]She was the first German surface raider to break into the Atlantic in autumn.

[00:04:11]Once at sea, Captain Teoddor Kanka ship became an immediate danger to any Allied ship or convoy. Fast enough to choose contact powerful enough to overmatch a lightly armed escort and elusive enough to force a wider Royal Navy response.

[00:04:28]But she was not the only threat. Hipper was later sent on a similar errand into the Atlantic, hunting convoys along the western approaches.

[00:04:40]In Eisenau and Shanho, far more powerful than either were preparing to follow their departure from the Baltic observed by a British agent as their low dark shapes cleared the coast.

[00:04:53]Under Admiral Gunto Luchens, newly repaired after the Norwegian campaign, these ships would become one of the most persistent threats in the North Atlantic. Convoys had to sail in a sea where several different threats might appear, and the Admiral T had to think in terms of more than one raider at once.

[00:05:13]She's passage into the Atlantic was not clean. The heavy cruiser entered the Denmark Strait, the narrow slot between Greenland and Iceland in a hurricane condition.

[00:05:24]Waves broke over the decks, ventilators were torn away, and men moved about in live ropes to avoid being swept overboard.

[00:05:32]Two were lost in the storm. Visibility fell to 300 yd, but the same storm that battered the ship mastered entirely. She emerged into the Atlantic undetected.

[00:05:47]Convoy HX84 sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, bound east for Britain. It consisted of 38 merchant ships carrying vital supplies across the North Atlantic, including petrol and food. For the open ocean stage of the crossing, HMS Jervis Bay was the convoy's only escort. That was a central weakness.

[00:06:09]proper escorts were scarce and ships like Jervis Bay were being used because there were not enough destroyers and corvettes to cover every route.

[00:06:19]On the 5th of November, as Aj4 continued eastward, the weather was fair and the sea was calm for this time of year.

[00:06:28]Meanwhile, Shere was also moving through the Atlantic.

[00:06:34]German wireless intelligence had not given Kanka the convoy's exact position, but it did narrow the search. He had been told that either this convoy or SC8 was expected to pass through his patrol area that afternoon somewhere in the same stretch of ocean.

[00:06:53]To find it, Kanka sent a scout plane and loft an EDO float plane with a range of a,000 mi.

[00:07:01]On its second sweep that afternoon, the pilot returned with the signal. A large convoy 88 mi ahead, making about 9 knots. At that speed, Shere could close the distance in roughly 3 hours. Conquer did not wait.

[00:07:18]That morning, Shere fell upon the British Mopen to the northwest of the convoy. The attack came without warning, fast enough that no distress signal could be sent before the ship was already finished.

[00:07:31]But the mopin did prove stubborn and it took nearly 90 minutes for her to actually sink. That delay pushed the attack of the convoy towards dusk rather than during full daylight. Although the convoy itself was unaware of what had transpired.

[00:07:48]Other shipping sailed on unaware of what had happened. By late afternoon, all circumstances were bringing both Sher and the convoy together. Meanwhile, aboard Joffysy's Bay, midshipman Ronnie Butler was one of the men watching the horizon as lights began to fade. A horseer groaned as the ship rolled slightly. Some of the crew had just finished tea. Others were waiting for it.

[00:08:33]As the convoy was crossing the North Atlantic that afternoon, it was lined in nine columns and HMS Jervis Bay was at the center column. The Commodore ship, Cornish City, was leading in the fifth.

[00:08:47]The day was fair and the sea was calm for the season.

[00:08:52]A little before sunset, the comm ended.

[00:08:55]Midshipman Ronnie Butler scanning the sea from Jervis Bay saw a ship on the port horizon. Figan looked through his binoculars and understood the danger at once. The order followed immediately.

[00:09:08]Sound action stations report an enemy raider, tell the convoy to scatter, tell it to make smoke, and pass the report to Admirali and to Cornish City. The radar was 12 mi distant at that moment. The initiative still lay with the German ship, but the few minutes won by clear recognition and fast orders were precious. Before Sher could bring her fire fully onto the convoy, every ship that turned away, made smoke, or open the distance became harder to destroy.

[00:09:42]Merchant ships worked up to full speed.

[00:09:44]Smoke screens began to form and the orderly column started to loosen. The convoy commodor rear Admiral Mulby aboard Cornish city had simultaneously ordered an emergency turn 40° to starboard pulling the formation away from the threat at the same moment began turned toward it. The first salvo came from 17,000 yd nearly 10 mi. At that range the gunnery jewel was unequal from the start. Jervy's base 6-in guns were completely outclassed by Sher's 6 11in and 8 5.9in guns. Yet Fan did not turn away. Before Sher could fire again, he altered cause directly toward the raider. But not to win a gunnery contest, but to make Jervis Bay the target while the convoy broke apart behind her.

[00:10:36]Figan's ship closed in. A shell burst in the water near her. She replied, but she was still out of range. She had maneuvered carefully to stay on the fringe of the armed merchant cruisers's reach. And so the fight opened as a one-sided action. The second salvo came in closer. One shell struck Jervis Bay and ra the bridge, hitting the heightfinder.

[00:11:00]The bridge caught fire. The forward steering gear went out of action. Pagan himself was hit and terribly wounded.

[00:11:07]His left arm was almost shot away. From forward positions like butlers, the battle was no longer a clean sighting on the horizon.

[00:11:16]It was the crack and thump of the 6-in guns shaking the deck underfoot, shells bursting in yellow flashes, fragments cutting across the open decks, and the smell of burning spreading from somewhere forward. No one needed to be told the situation was bad. That should have been enough to break the action at once, but it was not. Jery's base guns kept firing, though by now the fight was becoming less a jewel than an act of obstruction.

[00:11:46]Under catastrophic punishment, the ship was still closing, still drawing sheer fire. Bad damage now began to change the fight to invisible stages. Fan staggered to aft to the second bridge, his arm drenched in blood.

[00:12:02]Men at the gun saw him making his way along the wrecked ship. As the action continued, there was no order to abandon ship. One of Figgan's officers would later say that everybody aboard understood exactly what they were going to get and that it did not matter.

[00:12:19]Jervis Bay's purpose was not to survive.

[00:12:22]Every salvo aimed at her was a salvo not aimed at the vessels behind her.

[00:12:28]Then one of the guns was struck directly. The whole mountain and its crew were lifted bodily and hurled into the sea. Only one man escaped from that gun. Jervis Bay had already been hauled below the waterline and was burning from bow to stern. Yet somehow the surviving crew kept the remaining guns in action.

[00:12:50]The ship was no longer intact, but she was still fighting.

[00:12:56]The next decisive blow fell below. The engine room was hit and with that no water could be brought to the fire.

[00:13:04]Flames spread through the ship littered with wreckage and ammunition. Jervis Bay began to list first slightly and then more. Damage to the whole steering and to internal services now combined.

[00:13:18]Her ability to maneuver narrowed. Her ability to fight the fire shrank. Her survivability fell sharply. But even crippled, she lay between sheer and the convoy. Later accounts detail how Fan tried to control the ship from the after bridge. Then that position too was struck and shut away. Jervis Bay could now only steam into a straight line.

[00:13:40]Another hit in the engine room stopped her altogether. At the same time, her gunnery position had become hopeless.

[00:13:47]The forward guns were out of action, and because the ship was still headed towards Shere, the after guns could not bear on the enemy. By then, the delay had begun to matter. The light was fading, smoke was spreading, and each extra mile made the scattered merchant ships harder for Shir to find.

[00:14:05]The danger aboard Jervis Bay was now as much internal as external. Cordite, cartridges, cases, ropes, and wreckage lay across the decks in the path of flames. Crash fires broke out among the debris. Men stamped at them, flung burning wooden boxes overboard with bare hands, and tried to keep control over a bridge already beyond saving.

[00:14:29]Her decks were a wash. Her flag had been blasted away under shellfire. A man climbed into the rigging and nailed a new white enson to the mast. By now, Jervis Bay was settling by the stern.

[00:14:43]From a distance, Captain Sven Olander of the Swedish ship's Durol had remained far enough to watch the battle. Through his binoculars, he saw the British ship going down and saw Fan still visible on the shredded remnants of his command.

[00:14:58]Both arms lit at his side.

[00:15:03]Shells from Shere continued to pour in, five at a time. The superructure was being smashed away until, in Olander's words, only the ribs of the ship remained. It was a wreck still under fire. Figan somehow made his way back to the main bridge. He was dying. There at last came the order that marked the end of organized resistance. Abandoned ship.

[00:15:28]An officer acknowledged and went to the boats, but almost nothing usable remained.

[00:15:35]Four live refs were still serviceable.

[00:15:37]Men rushed to them through the wreckage and flame. One man on the forecast had not heard the order and continued at his station with earphones over his head until Ronny Butler reached him. He laid the phones down and walked calmly to the rafts. The entire superructure was burning as nearly 70 men leapt onto rafts. Jovis Bay was sinking fast. The punishment did not stop though. Even after her guns had fallen silent and she was clearly finished, the Shere kept firing, pouring shells into a wreck that could no longer fight back.

[00:16:11]When they were debriefed weeks later, survivors described the continued shelling as peculiarly brutal. One said it felt like target practice. Most of the men who made it off the ship were wounded by the time the shelling stopped.

[00:16:26]The fight between the ships had lasted for 22 minutes, but Jervis Bay did not sink until nearly 8:00, drifting, burning, and still drawing the eye of every man in the water who needed to know where the rafts were.

[00:16:39]Jervis Bay went down with Fan aboard her and only a fraction of her crew would survive.

[00:16:46]Captain Svenolander of the Swedish ships Durol had watched Jervis Bay go down. As Sher sailed away, she could steam on with the convoy or turn back toward the wreckage and men in the water. Still turned back. In the rising darkness, Olander ship began taking survivors from the raft.

[00:17:27]5 minutes after Jervis Bay sank, Admiral Sherid turned away from the wreck and went after the convoy. But by then, HX84 had ceased to exist as a single target.

[00:17:39]Under smoke and failing light, the ships had scattered onto separate courses, forcing Shear to hunt them down one by one. As Sher turned away towards the scattered convoy, another decision was made in the dark. Among the scattered ships, Beaverfort resisted her captain, New Pettigru, fired back against Sher, knowing it was hopeless, and he kept her, and he kept her occupied long enough for others to put more distance between themselves and the raider. One ship that seemed lost, but was not, was the tanker San Deo. She had been hit, set a blaze, and abandoned, her crew pulling away in lifeboats from a ship they expected never to see again. But a drift in the Atlantic the next day, some of those men spotted a burning shape on the horizon. It was their own ship still afloat. They rode back, climbed aboard, threw the smoke and wreckage, fought the fires down with what little remained, coaxed the engines back to life, and brought her into port. With her cargo of aviation fuel intact, they had no charts and barely a compass. They navigated by the wind and their own wake. The cost of this ambush though it was severe. Jervis Bay was gone and only 65 of her crew survived. There were many other casualties among the other sunken ships.

[00:19:01]Alongside Jervis Bay, five merchant men had been lost from the convoy and a combined 33,000 gross registered tons had been lost.

[00:19:11]Sher had won the action against Jervis Bay, but she had failed to trap the entire convoy. The remaining ships did make it for Britain alone, separated across the Atlantic night.

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