USS Mason (DD-191)

USS Mason (DD-191) was a Clemson-class destroyer in the United States Navy during World War II. She was later transferred to the Royal Navy as HMS Broadwater (H-81).

As USS Mason
The first Navy ship named for Secretary of the Navy John Y. Mason (1799–1859), Mason was laid down by Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, Newport News, Virginia, 10 July 1918; launched 8 March 1919; sponsored by Miss Mary Mason Williams, great-granddaughter of Secretary Mason and commissioned at Norfolk Navy Yard 28 February 1920, Lieutenant Carl F. Holden temporarily in command until Lieutenant Commander Hartwell C. Davis took command 8 March.

On 17 July Mason was designated DD-191. After shakedown off Norfolk, Virginia, she operated along the east coast for the next 2 years until she sailed for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a result of the Washington Naval Treaty of 6 February 1922 limiting naval armament, the destroyer decommissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard 3 July 1922.

As HMS Broadwater
After World War II broke out in Europe, Mason recommissioned 4 December 1939. Under terms of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement of 2 September 1940, she became one of 50 overage ships of this class turned over to Great Britain in exchange for 99-year leases on strategic bases in the Western Hemisphere. Mason arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2 October; decommissioned 8 October 1940; and was transferred to the British Royal Navy as HMS Broadwater (H-81) the next day.

On 15 October she departed Halifax for the British Isles, via St. John’s, Newfoundland, arriving in the River Clyde, Scotland, on the 26th for service with the 11th Escort Group, Western Approaches Command. During the early part of 1941 the Broadwater escorted convoys, carrying troops and military supplies, around the Cape of Good Hope to the Middle East. She spent May and June at Southampton, England.

Assigned to the Newfoundland Escort Force in July, the ship patrolled the North Atlantic and guarded convoys against the German submarine “wolfpacks” into the fall of that year. Early in the morning of 17 October she attacked a U-boat, one of a pack assaulting an American convoy SC-48 some 400 miles south of Iceland. The following day Broadwater fell victim to torpedoes of GS U-101 (1940) and sank at 13:40. Four officers and forty crew lost their lives including Lt. John Stanley Parker RNVR, the first American to die in action whilst serving under the White Ensign.