Hms Appletree

Appletree was a wooden steam drifter of about 84 tons, built in 1907 and first named Progress. The Royal Navy took her into wartime service in 1940 for aircraft observation work. On the day of the loss she was working in the Oban area, an important west-coast naval anchorage and route through the Inner Hebrides.

Appletree was lost in a collision outside Oban Harbour on 15 October 1940. The surviving short records do not securely name the other vessel or preserve a detailed minute-by-minute account. Collision, rather than bombing, a mine or bad weather, is the clear recorded cause.

The checked public accounts used here do not give a dependable crew total, death count or list of survivors. Silence is not proof that nobody died. Until a crew or casualty record is tied securely to this loss, the human outcome should remain uncounted rather than guessed.

The Scottish record places the wreck in the waters south of Oban. A later coastal heritage report identifies the vessel and the collision but does not describe a complete surveyed hull. Timber drifters deteriorate and can become scattered or buried, so the saved point should not be treated as a visible intact ship.

Appletree represents the many small fishing craft drawn into wartime naval work. Her aircraft-observation role was modest beside that of a warship, but such local vessels helped watch and protect crowded coastal routes. Her accidental loss also shows that collision inside busy defended waters remained a serious wartime danger.