Greek destroyer Kanaris (L53)

RHS Kanaris (L53) (Greek: ΒΠ Κανάρης) was a Type III Hunt-class destroyer destroyer that was originally built for the British Royal Navy as HMS Hatherleigh.

General characteristics
The Hunt class was meant to fill the Royal Navy's need for a large number of small destroyer-type vessels capable of both convoy escort and operations with the fleet. The Type III Hunts differed from the previous Type II ships in replacing a twin 4-inch gun mount by two torpedo tubes to improve their ability to operate as destroyers.

The ship was 85.3 m long, her beam was 11.4 m and draught 2.4 m. Displacement was 1050 LT standard and 1490 LT under full load. Two Admiralty boilers raising steam at 300 psi and 620 F fed Parsons single-reduction geared steam turbines that drove two propeller shafts, generating 19000 shp at 380 rpm. This gave a speed of 26 kn and a range of 2350 nmi at 20 kn.

Her main gun armament included four 4-inch (102 mm) QF Mk XVI guns (anti-ship and anti-aircraft) in two twin mounts, with a quadruple 2-pounder "pom-pom" gun and three Oerlikon 20 mm cannons providing close-in anti-aircraft fire. The ship's anti-aircraft armament may have been supplemented by two Bofors 40 mm guns. Two 21 in torpedo tubes were fitted in a single twin mount, while two depth charge chutes, four depth charge throwers and 70 depth charges comprised the ship's anti-submarine armament. Type 291 and Type 285 radars was fitted, as was a Type 128 sonar.

Service
The ship was laid down at the shipyard of Vickers-Armstrongs, High Walker, on 12 December 1940. Before her completion, she was transferred to the Royal Hellenic Navy and commissioned on 27 July 1942, in order to relieve heavy losses of ships sustained by Greece during the German invasion of 1941. She was named after Admiral Konstantinos Kanaris, hero of the Greek War of Independence, and later Prime Minister of Greece. She served throughout the Second World War and during the Greek Civil War. In 1959, she was returned to the Royal Navy and broken up for scrap in 1960.