Also known as
BASILISK
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Wikipedia vessel details
Secondary-source table data; verify against primary records where available.
- Name
- HMS Basilisk (H11)
- Pennant number
- H11
- Flag
- Royal Navy
- Description
- Destroyer
- Built
- 1931
- Tonnage
- 1,360
- Commanding officer
- Cdr Maxwell Richmond, RN
- Trips to Dunkirk
- 3
- Troops landed
- 695
- Notes
- Sunk by air attack off La Panne on 1 June
Dunkirk-related passages from the linked page
HMS Basilisk was a B-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy around 1930. Initially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet, she was transferred to the Home Fleet in 1936. The ship escorted convoys and conducted anti-submarine patrols early in World War II before participating in the Norwegian Campaign. Basilisk was sunk by German aircraft during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. The ship was transferred from the Western Approaches Command on 30 May to support the evacuation from Dunkirk.[15] She made two trips to Dover during the following day and evacuated a total of 695 men.[16] Basilisk returned to La Panne to load more troops on the morning of 1 June and was attacked three times by German bombers. One bomb from the first wave detonated inside the No. 3 boiler room, killed all of her boiler and engine room personnel, fractured her steam lines and knocked out all her machinery. Near misses from the same attack buckled the sides of her hull and her upper deck. The ship's torpedoes and depth charges were jettisoned to reduce topweight and the French fishing trawler Jolie Mascotte attempted to tow Basilisk. A second attack caused no further damage, but caused the French ship to drop the tow. The third attack around noon sank Basilisk[17][18] in shallow water at .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct,.mw-parser-output .geo-inline-hidden{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}51°08′16″N 02°35′06″E / 51.13778°N 2.58500°E / 51.13778; 2.58500. Jolie Mascotte and the destroyer Whitehall rescued eight officers and 123 crewmen from the ship.[10] Whitehall then destroyed the wreck with gunfire and torpedoes.[19] Gardner, W. J. R. (2000). The Evacuation from Dunkirk: Operation Dynamo, 26 May-4 June 1940. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 0-7146-5120-6. Winser, John de D. (1999). B.E.F. Ships Before, At and After Dunkirk. Gravesend, Kent: World Ship Society. ISBN 0-905617-91-6.
ORDE Registry
7 records7 potential matching records have been identified.
These records may contain vessel particulars, reported movements, participation assessments, named personnel and source references. A match does not by itself prove that the vessel participated in Operation Dynamo.
“Potential match” means a candidate returned by one or more indexing rules; it is not necessarily an exact identity match. Depending on the source, matching may use a normalised vessel name, a partial text or OCR hit, an alias, or related metadata. Roman-numeral suffixes such as I, II, III, IV and V may be absent, misread or separated from the base name, so records for similarly named vessels can be grouped incorrectly. Multi-word names can also produce candidates where only one significant word matches. Confirm the full name, numeral, vessel type, dimensions, builder, ownership, dates and source context before treating two records as the same vessel.
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Small Craft Service List
0 records0 potential matching records have currently been identified.
Further indexing may identify service-list entries, vessel metadata, source-page references and protected full-size document images. The absence of a current match does not establish that no relevant source exists.
We are compiling and checking transcriptions, metadata, vessel-name matches, source references and reuse permissions before publishing further detail. This work helps prevent incomplete OCR, historic spelling variations or unverified associations from being presented as established fact.
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No Small Craft records.
Red List (1939–40) — OCR
0 records0 potential matching records have currently been identified.
Further indexing may identify OCR text matches, source files, page references and digitised page imagery. The absence of a current match does not establish that no relevant source exists.
We are compiling and checking transcriptions, metadata, vessel-name matches, source references and reuse permissions before publishing further detail. This work helps prevent incomplete OCR, historic spelling variations or unverified associations from being presented as established fact.
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Ship Details
These details have been aggregated from multiple sources and may include contemporary records, later recollections, claims or assertions for which no corroborating evidence has been identified. Inclusion does not establish that any account or assertion is accurate. The information may be incomplete, out of date, disputed or incorrect and should be checked against the underlying source records and independent evidence before being relied upon.
No additional ship details available.
Lloyd’s Yacht Register (1939)
Source: Lloyd’s Register Foundation, Heritage & Education Centre, Lloyd’s Register of Yachts 1939, digitised via Internet Archive. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Images have been converted, resized and watermarked for web display; machine-generated table OCR has been added.
No Lloyd’s records.
Operation Dynamo Map — Movement Logs
Movements recorded for BASILISK during the evacuation period, as plotted on the Operation Dynamo map.
| Departed | Route | Arrived | Troops | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 May 1940, 18:00 | Dover → Off La Panne | 1 Jun 1940, 05:00 | — |
Attempt
Assumed inbound journey inferred from a dated loss; departure time is not logged
|
Wikipedia: List of ships at Dunkirk — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_at_Dunkirk |
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