Current Information:

Age-27

2, Oak Villas, Lower Richmond Road, Mortlake

Pembroke Dock (Llanion) Cemetery, Wales

Q ships were designed to look like defenceless merchant ships which would lure enemy submarines to attack them on the surface. They would then reveal their hidden guns and engage the submarine. They were called Q ships after their home port of Queenstown in Ireland. There has been a long running debate as to their effectiveness in sinking German submarines with some maintaining that they were a waste of resources, pointing to the fact that minefields destroyed more U-boats. Nevertheless they accounted for 10% of U-boat sinkings.

HMS P60 was one of these Q Ships, operating out of Milford Haven in Wales. On 4th January, 1918, she was involved in an incident, details of which are largely unknown, in which five of her crew drowned. One of these was W Richards.