The Wartime Memories Project

- HMS Royal Sovereign during the Second World War -


Naval Index
skip to content


This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.


If you enjoy this site

please consider making a donation.




    Site Home

    WW2 Home

    Add Stories

    WW2 Search

    Library

    Help & FAQs


 WW2 Features

    Airfields

    Allied Army

    Allied Air Forces

    Allied Navy

    Axis Forces

    Home Front

    Battles

    Prisoners of War

    Allied Ships

    Women at War

    Those Who Served

    Day-by-Day

    Library

    The Great War

 Submissions

    Add Stories

    Time Capsule

    TWMP on Facebook



    Childrens Bookshop

 FAQ's

    Help & FAQs

    Glossary

    Volunteering

    Contact us

    News

    Bookshop

    About


Advertisements











World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII 1939 1945

HMS Royal Sovereign



4th Sep 1939 Patrol

6th Sep 1939 Patrol

7th Sep 1939 Patrol


If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.



Those known to have sailed in

HMS Royal Sovereign

during the Second World War 1939-1945.

  • Brown Frank Frances. Stkr.
  • Grierson Frederick. Ord.Sig.
  • Griffin Joseph William.
  • Lee George William. Stkr.
  • Wood DSM Bertram. Stoker 1/Cl. (d.1942)

The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List

Records of HMS Royal Sovereign from other sources.



The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

Announcements



  • The Wartime Memories Project has been running for 24 years. If you would like to support us, a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting and admin or this site will vanish from the web.
  • 28th March 2024 - Please note we currently have a huge backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263784 your information is still in the queue, please do not resubmit, we are working through them as quickly as possible.
  • Looking for help with Family History Research?   Please read our Family History FAQ's
  • The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.
    If you enjoy this site

    please consider making a donation.


Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the War? Our Library contains an ever growing number diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text.



We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates.

If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page.


Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to WW2. We would like to obtain digital copies of any documents or photographs relating to WW2 you may have at home.

If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted. World War 1 One ww1 wwII second 1939 1945 battalion
Did you know? We also have a section on The Great War. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.



Want to know more about HMS Royal Sovereign?


There are:2 items tagged HMS Royal Sovereign available in our Library

  These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War.


Ord.Sig. Frederick Grierson HMS Royal Sovereign

My Dad, Frederick Grierson, was in the Royal Navy from August 1938 to December 1945 serving on a total of 16 different ships including the HMS Royal Sovereign. I have his full Certificate of service. Dad died in 1987.

Brian Grierson



Stkr. George William Lee HMS Royal Sovereign

George Lee was my grandfather. When I was a child he used to tell me about the parts of the world he had travelled to aboard HMS Royal Sovereign during WW2. Places I recollect are Malta, the Suez Canal, Sierra Leone, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and I think Bombay (Mumbai). I remember him talking about sailors throwing coins into the sea from on board when docked in Sierra Leone and the locals would dive in to retrieve them!

Stuart Lee



Joseph William Griffin 281st Kings Squadron

My Grandad, Joseph Griffin served from 1937 to 1945. He did his training at Deal in Kent, I think. His first ship was the Royal Sovereign which he was not on for too long. Then he was assigned to HMS Southampton from which I have a very interesting journal he kept from the first day he arrived on her to her last day when she was badly damaged by four direct hits from Stuka dive bombers just off Malta. There were a lot of men killed into the eighty's and more than one hundred injured, the ship was that badly damaged she had to be abandoned. The men were saved by other boats in the convoy. He watched as two Navy destroyers torpedoed her to sink her so she could not be repaired by Axis forces.

The men were taken to Alexandria where they were looked after. Later my grandfather was assigned to HMS York which was guarding commercial ships in the Mediterranean and moving men and equipment from Greece to Egypt amongst other duties. On one such occasion collecting troops from Souda Bay she was surprised by, I think, four Italian motor torpedo launches of which two were successful in damaging the York who was beached in Souda Bay, Crete. I know he was hiding in caves on Crete and was there through the Battle of Crete and didn't leave until April 1941.

If anyone has any more information about the crews time in Crete I would be very grateful if they would post it. Thanks in advance.

John Griffin



Stkr. Frank Frances Brown HMS Royal Sovereign

Feank Brown HMS Pemboke

Frank Brown HMS Royal Sovereign Refit USA

Frank Brown Royal Sovereign

My father's brother, Frank Brown, of Norwich, Norfolk was a fishmongers assistant at the start of World War 2. He signed up to join the Royal Navy and was in class 107 at HMS Royal Arthur from 25th of February 1941 to 31st of March 1941 this is taken from his Royal Navy Record. On the photo he second from the right on the back row. He then went to HMS Pembroke until 21st of July 1941.

He then served on HMS Royal Sovereign from 21st of July 1941 to 13th of December 1943 as a Stoker First Class, during his time with the ship it served in the Mediterranean as an escort ship. He also went to America where the HMS Royal Sovereign had a refit in Philadelphia, whilst being refitted the Ships Steering wheel was presented to the city as a token of appreciation of the hospitality shown to the officers and crew.

He then went back to HMS Pembroke for a while before going to HMS Braganza which is in the Royal Navy barracks in Bombay India 1st of May 1945 until 30th of November 1945. Finally he spent a week at HMS Sultan finishing with HMS Pembroke on 4 May 1946

Alan Brown



Stoker 1/Cl. Bertram Wood DSM HMS Ark Royal (d.1942)

My grandfather, Bertram Wood DSM, served in the Royal Navy from 1924 until April 1942, when he was killed. He served in HMS Ark Royal, HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Pembroke, HMS Chatham, HMS Repulse, HMS Renown, HMS Ramillies, HMS Valiant, HMS Pegasus, HMS Ajax and HMS Havock.

Carol Broomfield







Recomended Reading.

Available at discounted prices.







Links


















    The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items.

    The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.

    If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.



    Hosted by:

    The Wartime Memories Project Website

    is archived for preservation by the British Library





    Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
    - All Rights Reserved

    We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.