From 1939 to 1942 she served in home waters and as a convoy escort. On 11 January 1941 she was bombed, suffering at least 4 deaths on board.[2][3] In June and July 1941 she and three Flower-classcorvettes escorted the troop shipAnselm from Britain en route for Freetown, Sierra Leone. When the troop ship was torpedoed north of the Azores, Challenger and the corvette HMS Starwort rescued hundreds of survivors and then transferred them to the armed merchant cruiserHMS Cathay.[4]
Post-war surveys
From 1942 to 1946 Challenger surveyed in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. She returned to Chatham in 1946 for a refit before returning to the Persian Gulf in late 1946. She left the Gulf in 1947 and went to Cyprus where a shore party logged tides. She then proceeded to Gibraltar for another refit in dry dock.
In December 1947 men from Challenger and from the two destroyers Cockade and Contest were landed in Aden in an attempt to restore order following anti-Jewish rioting.[5]
[it] was not more than 50 miles from the spot where the nineteenth-century Challenger found her deepest depth [...] and it may be thought fitting that a ship with the name Challenger should put the seal on the work of that great pioneering expedition of oceanography.[9]
In January 1954, Challenger returned to Britain, was paid off, and was broken up at Dover.
References
^"Mishap to British survey ship". The Times. No. 46249. London. 27 September 1932. col B, p. 14.
^Gaskell, Thomas F. (1960). Under The Deep Oceans: Twentieth Century Voyages of Discovery (1 ed.). Eyre & Spottiswood. p. 121.
^Gaskell, Thomas (1960). Under the Deep Oceans: Twentieth Century Voyages of Discovery. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. pp. 24–25.
Sources
Gaskell, T.F. (18 March 1954). "Seismic Refraction Work by H.M.S. Challenger in the Deep Oceans". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 222 (1150): 356–361. doi:10.1098/rspa.1954.0079.
Gaskell, Thomas Frohock (1960). "Voyages of HMS Challenger II". Under The Deep Oceans: Twentieth Century Voyages of Discovery. New York: Norton.
Wyatt, A.G.N. (July 1934). "Surveying Cruises of H.M.S.Challenger off the Coast of Labrador in 1932 and 1933". Journal of the Geographical Society. 84 (1): 33–53. doi:10.2307/1786831. JSTOR1786831.