HMS Partridge (1916)

HMS Partridge was a Royal Navy Admiralty M-class destroyer constructed and then operational in the First World War, later being sunk by enemy action in 1917. The destroyer was the sixth Royal Navy vessel to carry the name HMS Partridge.

Sinking
The vessel was assigned to the Fourteenth Destroyer Flotilla by July 1916. On 11 December 1917 the destroyer left from Lerwick on the Shetland Islands, along with HMS Pellew (1916) and several armed trawlers to escort six merchant ships to Bergen, in Norway. The convoy was spotted by a flotilla of German destroyers and they unsuccessfully fought an engagement with the attacking destroyers, with Partridge being hit repeatedly by shells and torpedoes. The destroyer subsequently sank in the North Sea on 12 December 1917. Reports indicate that 97 of the crew were killed and only 24 were rescued. The wreck is believed to be off the Norwegian coast. One incident of reported heroism in the sinking, in which a Lieutenant Grey sacrificed a place in a life-raft for another officer resulted in the award of the Stanhope Gold Medal by the Royal Humane Society.