HMS Calypso (D61)

HMS Calypso (D61) was a C class cruiser of the Caledon sub-class of the Royal Navy, launched in 1917 and sunk in 1940 by the Italian submarine Alpino Attilio Bagnolini.

HMS Calypso was built by Hawthorn Leslie and Company. Her keel was laid down in February 1916 and she was completed in June 1917.

Calypso was involved in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917, when she and her sister ship HMS Caledon (D53) were part of the force that intercepted German minesweepers near the German coast. During the battle, Calypso's bridge was struck by a 5.9 in shell which killed all personnel on the bridge including the captain, and causing the accidental firing of a ready torpedo.

Calypso went to the rescue of the Greek royal family in 1922 after King Constantine of Greece abdicated and a military dictatorship seized power. The King's brother, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark was banished for life by a revolutionary court and was forced to flee with his family (which included his 18-month-old son Philippos who would later become Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh). The British Government had received news of the situation, and dispatched Calypso to evacuate the family. They boarded with minimal possessions. Philippos was carried onboard in a cot made from an orange box. The family were taken to Brindisi where they were put on a train to Paris.

On 2 November 1924, the destroyer HMS Venomous (D75) was steaming in the Grand Harbour upon returning to Valleta, Malta, from a cruise in the Western Mediterranean Sea when she accidentally rammed and sank a motorboat from Calypso. All four people aboard the motorboat were saved by a boat from the destroyer HMS Umpire (1917).

During the early part of the Second World War, Calypso served with the 7th Cruiser Squadron on Northern Patrol duty as a blockade ship in the North Sea between Scotland and Iceland. On 24 September 1939, Calypso intercepted the German merchant ship Minden south of Iceland. The crew of Minden scuttled their ship before she could be captured. On 22 November, Calypso captured the German merchant ship Konsul Hendrik Fisser off Iceland.

Following the sinking of the HMS Rawalpindi on 23 November, Calypso was involved in the search for the German warships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau.

In early 1940, Calypso was sent to Alexandria in the eastern Mediterranean.

Calypso was the first Royal Naval (and British) vessel to be sunk by the Regia Marina in the Second World War. Two days after Italy declared war on Great Britain, Calypso was on an anti-shipping patrol against Italian ships travelling to Libya when she was struck by one torpedo from an Italian submarine about 50 mi south of Cape Lithion in Crete in the Eastern Meditarranean. The sinking occurred at 00:59 on 12 June 1940. The submarine was the R.Smg. Alpino Attilio Bagnolini captained by C.C. Franco Tosoni Pittoni. One officer and 38 ratings from Calypso perished in the sinking. The majority of her survivors were picked up by the destroyer HMS Dainty (H53) and taken to Alexandria.