Thornborough (DE-565)
An alternate spelling of Thornbrough. At the age of 7, Edward Thornbrough, born on 27 July 1754 at Plymouth Dock, England, went to sea in the 74-gun line of battleship Arrogant and spent most of the next six decades serving in the Royal Navy. Perhaps the first highlight of his career occurred during his service in the sloop Falcon off the coast of Massachusetts at the outset of the American Revolution. During a boat expedition to take possession of an American schooner which had run aground in Cape Ann harbor while attempting to escape from Falcon, Thornbrough was seriously wounded by fire from the shore.
Thornbrough later won renown during the wars with France caused by the French Revolution. After Waterloo, he served for three years at Portsmouth as Commanded in Chief before retiring in 1818. Admiral Sir Edward Thornbrough died on 3 April 1834.
On 10 June 1943, before her construction began, Thornborough (DE-565) was assigned to the Royal Navy. The Buckley-class destroyer escort was laid down on 22 September 1943 at Hingham, Mass., by the Bethlehem Steel Co.; launched on 13 November 1943; and completed and transferred to the United Kingdom under Lend-Lease agreement and commissioned in the Royal Navy on 31 December 1943.
Thornborough (K.574) served in the English Channel and off Normandy in 1944. In the summer and fall of that year, the Captain-class frigate operated as a radar ship with prowling motor torpedo boat groups off the coast of Flanders, protecting Allied support shipping and preventing German ships from supplying hard-pressed units ashore, or from mining waters used by the Allies. In July and August off Cape D'Antifer, she engaged enemy E-boats and attacked a German convoy. In November, she again took part in an attack on enemy E-boats in the Scheldt Estuary.
For the remainder of the war, Thornborough operated in the North Sea and in the Atlantic. She was nominally returned to the United States on 30 January 1947, and her name was struck from the Navy list on 7 February. On 24 April 1947, she was sold to Athens Piraeus Electricity Co., Ltd., Athens, Greece, to be broken up.
