HMS Fencer
1942 Attacker-class escort carrier
HMS Fencer (D64/R308) was an American-built Attacker-class escort carrier that served with the Royal Navy during the Second World War.
Acquired by the United States Navy for conversion to a Bogue-class escort carrier; she was transferred to the Royal Navy and commissioned as Fencer on 1 March 1943, under the Lend-Lease agreement. She spent most of her career escorting convoys in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, she transferred to the British East Indies Fleet in October 1944.
Construction
Fencer was laid down 5 September 1941, as a C3-S-A1 freighter, under Maritime Commission contract, MC hull #197, by Western Pipe and Steel Company, in San Francisco, California. The hull was purchased by the US Navy to be converted to a Bogue-class escort carrier and named Croatan (AVG-14). While under construction she was transferred to the Admiralty under the Lend-Lease agreement, with a Royal Navy commissioning crew arriving in May 1942, under the command of Commander C.N. Lentaigne, RN. She was launched on 4 April 1942, sponsored by Mrs. Powers Symington. She was redesignated as ACV-14, on 20 Aug 1942. She was commissioned into the US Navy on 20 February 1943, as Croatan, and decommissioned and transferred to the RN, on 27 February 1943. She was commissioned into the RN, on 1 March 1943, as HMS Fencer (D64), with Captain E.W. Anstice, RN in command.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “HMS Fencer” is 1942 Attacker-class escort carrier. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Fencer, Attacker-class and escort, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q74860. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1944, 1941 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “HMS Fencer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.