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What is recorded here

built as motor minesweeper of the MMS ll class. HMS MMS 1086, MS Franklin Roosevelt.

MV Probe began as the wooden motor minesweeper HMS MMS 1086, built at Lowestoft in 1944 and transferred to the Norwegian Navy as Franklin Roosevelt. It later returned to Lowestoft as a survey vessel and was sold for scrap in 1969. Its decaying hull remains in Lake Lothing; no wartime sinking or deaths belong to this resting place.

The vessel and voyage

The craft was built at Lowestoft in 1944 as HMS MMS 1086, one of the small wooden motor minesweepers made to clear sea mines without a large metal hull setting them off. It transferred to the Royal Norwegian Navy on completion and served as Franklin Roosevelt. In later civilian use it became MV Probe and worked as a survey vessel from Lowestoft during the 1960s.

How it was lost

Probe was not sunk in action. It was sold for scrap in 1969 and ended as an abandoned or partly dismantled hulk in Lake Lothing. The quick public sources do not explain which owner placed it there, how much machinery was removed or the exact year it ceased floating. Calling this a wartime wreck would confuse the vessel's service history with its much later disposal.

Deaths and survival

No death or rescue is attached to the hull's final resting place. It had completed naval and civilian work before disposal, and the checked accounts do not report anybody aboard when it became a hulk. Its people are best represented through the British builders, Norwegian naval crews and Lowestoft survey workers who used it, not through an invented final disaster.

What remains

The mapped wreck is a visible decaying hull in Lake Lothing. Aerial photographs show the outline close to the shore, but the public map does not give a formal measured survey or say how much original 1944 timber survives beneath later alteration and decay. It should be viewed from lawful public ground; the hulk is unstable industrial waterfront remains, not an open museum ship.

Why it mattered

Probe connects three parts of Lowestoft's maritime life: wartime small-boat building, an Allied transfer to Norway and post-war sea survey work. Wooden minesweepers were deliberately built with little magnetic metal so they could work around magnetic mines. The quiet hulk therefore holds more history than its appearance suggests, even though its end came through abandonment and scrapping rather than battle.