HMS Portia (1916)

Portia was laid down by Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of Greenock with the yard number 475 in May 1915, launched on 10 August the following year and completed on 24 October.^[6] The ship was named after Portia from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. It was the second time that the name had been used, the preceding vessel having been launched more than a century before in 1810.^[7] The vessel was initially deployed as part of the Grand Fleet, joining the Fifteenth Destroyer Flotilla.^[8]

Portia was transferred from the Grand Fleet on 23 January 1917 and allocated to anti-submarine operations after the German navy declared unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917.^[9] On 14 February, the destroyer joined sister ships Partridge, Plover and Rob Roy in hunting the submarine SM UC-44. The search did not find anything.^[10] Also common were escort duties to protect convoys of merchant ships. Sometimes the operations did not deter the attackers, as on 17 May when the submarine SM U-19 attacked a seven-ship convoy which the destroyer was escorting and sank one, a Swedish vessel.^[11] Others were more successful, such as Convoy HH13 of thirteen ships which came through without loss.^[12]

After the Armistice of 11 November 1918 the Royal Navy returned to a peacetime level of mobilisation, and surplus vessels were placed in reserve. Portia was initially transferred to Devenport on 12 December 1919 until being decommissioned and sold to Thos. W. Ward in Milford Haven on 9 May 1921.^[13] The ship was subsequently broken up.^[14]