HMS Berkeley Castle (K387) HMS Berkeley Castle (K387) HMS "Berkeley Castle" was a Castle-class corvette of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. She was named after Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. The Castle-class corvettes were an improved and enlarged derivative of the earlier Flower-class corvettes, which was intended to be built by shipyards that could not build the larger and more capable frigates. The greater length of the Castles gave made them better seaboats than the Flowers, which were not originally designed for ocean escort work. Large numbers (96 in total) were ordered in late 1942 and early 1943 from shipyards in the United Kingdom and
Berkeley Castle and remained lying in state at Berkeley for a month, in the Chapel of St John within the castle keep, before Thomas de Berkeley escorted it to Gloucester Abbey for burial. Thomas was later charged with being an accessory to the murder, but his defence was that it was carried out by the agents of Roger Mortimer while he was away from the castle, and in 1337 he was cleared of all charges. In the 14th century, the Great Hall was given a new roof and it is here the last court jester in England, Dickie Pearce, died after falling