Category:Minesweeping Flotillas (UK)

Prior to mid-1916 British minesweeping efforts relied on the work of torpedo gunboats, sloops and miscellaneous craft with no formal unit designation. In mid-1916, those vessels supporting the Grand Fleet were organised into the First, Second and Third Fleet Sweeping Flotillas.

Other Fleet Sweeping Flotillas eventually followed, numbered discontinuously and without apparent pattern. As a stray note, one seems to have been stillborn: Lieutenant-Commander R.N.R. Percy Reginald Vaughan was appointed as Senior Officer in the Fourteenth F.S.F. on 14 December, 1918 and in command of Totnes, but this appears to be cancelled on 31 December, and this formation is never mentioned in the Navy List.^[1]

Post-War

The new Royal Navy fashioned Minesweeping Flotillas numbered 1-4. By World War II, there was also a Sixth flotilla, weakly implying a Fifth.

See Also