Flower-class corvette

The Flower class was a British class of 294 corvettes built in the Second World War as cheap anti-submarine convoy escorts, based on the whale-catcher Southern Pride of Smiths Dock Company and named after flowers. Because the design used merchant-ship scantlings and commercial triple expansion steam machinery, small yards across Britain and Canada could build them, and they became the mainstay of the Mid-Ocean Escort Force in the first half of the war, although they were slow, at a maximum of 16 knots, and lightly armed. Harland and Wolff at Belfast built part of the original series: the Admiralty ordered 20 from the yard on 19 September 1939, among them Gloxinia, and ordered six more from it in 1940 that were cancelled in January 1941. HMCS Sackville is the only member of the class preserved as a museum ship.