Lotus entered service less than a month before sailing with PQ 17, then joined the search-and-rescue effort after the convoy scattered. Launched as Phlox, she took the name Lotus when the earlier ship was transferred to the Free French Navy. She was among the last Flower-class corvettes ordered for the Royal Navy before the service turned to larger corvettes and frigates. Postwar analysis revised some of the submarine kills credited to her, leaving the exact wartime tally uncertain. She later returned to commercial use as a buoy tender and whaler. Ayrshire was a very different kind of escort, a 540-ton civilian trawler completed in 1938 and armed with a four-inch gun and depth charges. She returned to her owner in October 1945, was renamed Macbeth in 1946, and was scrapped in January 1967.
Chapter · 1:36-5:33
HMS Lotus on PQ 17 and HMS Ayrshire as a trawler escort
HMS Lotus, a newly commissioned Flower-class corvette, and HMS Ayrshire, a requisitioned civilian trawler, show the range of small ships used in the convoy war.