The interwar dilemma of replacing old escorts

The featured emergency-built escort displaced nearly 1,300 tons and reached about 16 knots on a single shaft driven by a triple-expansion engine and two boilers producing roughly 2,500 horsepower. Its usual armament of two quick-firing 4-inch guns, two 12-pounders, and depth-charge throwers made it useful enough to remain in service until it was sold for breaking up in 1938. Because the Royal Navy retained many vessels of this kind, replacement appeared less urgent during the 1920s and early 1930s. Their rapid First World War construction also encouraged the argument that another crash programme could simply be mounted when the next emergency arrived. Britain was allowed and able to build modern sloops, and the argument here is that it should have done so before the crisis. The real contest was budgetary: advocates of other projects could use the surviving escorts and faith in British ingenuity as reasons not to fund replacements.