At the onset of World War I, the warring powers needed all the help they could get on both land and sea. So, when the British Empire lost two of her ships to mines and torpedoes, they did the only logical thing they could think of: welded the remaining pieces together and sent the ship back into the war.
The World War I Naval equivalent of Motrin and clean socks. (HMS Nubian in Chatham Drydock after being torpedoed in 1916)
The HMS Nubian and the HMS Zulu were both Tribal-class destroyers in the service of the Royal Navy. They were also both launched in 1909. Since their range was much too short to go into the open ocean, they were used primarily for home defense, hunting submarines, and protecting England from any seaborne threats. Unfortunately, they both also met similar fates at the hands of the Kaiser’s navy.
Nubian was part of the 1st Destroyer Flotilla, charged with defending England’s east coast. By the outbreak of World War I, she was in the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla hunting German U-boats and hitting German defenses on the coast of Belgium. She was torpedoed by one such submarine during the 1916 Battle of the Dover Straits. None of her crew were killed until the ship ran aground and broke apart while being towed back to port. The bow of Nubian was completely torn off, and a dozen men were killed.
HMS Zulu lost its stern after hitting a German mine.
HMS Zulu was in the same class as the Nubian. The two ships were even part of the same destroyer flotilla before the war started. By the time World War I did kick off, Zulu was in the 6th Destroyer Flotilla operating outside of Dover, where she joined the Dover Patrol, looking for German submarines to prevent them from accessing the Atlantic through the English Channel. Unfortunately for the Zulu, she struck a mine laid by a German sub. The explosion killed three sailors and ripped off the ship’s stern.
A French destroyer helped it limp back to the port of Calais, where it was towed back to England. Once in England, the Zulu and the Nubian would make history: they would become the HMS Zubian.
The Zubian, with no real difference in length, displacement, or firepower.
The portmanteau of the two ships’ names is as accurate as it is appropriate. The Nubian, having lost her bow and the Zulu, having lost her stern, could not simply be written off as a loss during what was then considered “the War to End All Wars.” The two sister ships were so similar that they could exchange parts or whole pieces – and that’s exactly what happened. Instead of scrapping one or the other, the two parts were just welded together. The resulting ship, the Zubian, set sail for vengeance almost immediately.
In the war’s final two years, Zubian saw service in the 6th Flotilla in the Dover Straits throughout the war. In February 1918, she saw a U-boat attempt to surface with its antenna up. Zubian moved to ram the German U-boat, but it submerged before the British could hit her. Zubian dropped depth charge after depth charge on the sub until oil and metal floated to the surface, revenge for the hurt German U-boats put on her previous two ships (and the crews manning them).