The death has been announced of Lieutenant Commander Innes Hamilton, 86, an officer on the famous destroyer Maori which was sunk at her moorings in Grand Harbour in the second world war after taking part in many Malta convoys.

Hamilton is said to have been the last officer to leave the destroyer as her stern settled on the bottom of Grand Harbour with her bow sticking out of the sea opposite where the Corradino Grain Terminal is located today.

Maori was in the thick of action from the earliest months of the war, including the naval action off Norway in April 1940 which although victorious, did nothing to stop the German invasion of that country. Maori was one of the last British ships to evacuate troops from Norway.

In June, 1941, Maori was in a destroyer flotilla that took on the mighty German battleship Bismarck in the Atlantic, firing torpedoes at her in an attempt to slow her down enough for the British Home Fleet to catch up with her, as eventually happened. Miraculously none of the destroyers were hit - just one of the Bismarck's shells would probably have disabled them.

By the end of 1941, Maori was in the Mediterranean and again in the thick of the action. In December she was among four destroyers which successfully attacked two Italian cruisers off the North African coast, sinking them with torpedoes.

Maori then joined several convoys to Malta as the island swayed between survival and surrender.

She was hit at her berth in Grand Harbour by a bomb which exploded in her engine room on February 12, 1942. Some of her own ammunition exploded and the blazing ship eventually sank, except for her bow. Hamilton, the last officer to leave her, was awarded the first of his two DSCs.

Two Maltese policemen received commendations for their bravery during the same action. Philip Vella in his book 'Malta: Blitzed but not beaten', says that two police constables, J. Meli and V. Gili, braved exploding ammunition from the destroyer to rescue some of the crewmen from the blazing ship.

Hamilton transferred to the cruiser Penelope and took part in the Second Battle of Sirte, during which Royal Navy cruisers and destroyers saved a Malta convoy from the clutches of a greatly superior Italian force.

In Grand Harbour Penelope suffered such damage from shrapnel and shell splinters that she was soon nicknamed Pepperpot. But unlike Maori, she managed to slip out of harbour and escaped to Gibraltar.

Later in the war Hamilton also saw action during the D-Day landings.

After the war he unsuccessfully tried to take up politics and later founded his own investment consultancy.

Innes Hamilton was the last officer to leave the Maori before she sank.

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