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
GWR 4073 Class 4079 Pendennis Castle fire, blamed on the provision of unusually high-calorific-value, carefully screened coal which caused the fire to burn white-hot as the speed exceeded 90 mph. This special coal had been sourced in a well-meaning gesture by British Railways in the knowledge that the Castle would be deliberately pushed as close to 100 mph as possible on its last scheduled service. As there was no standby Castle at Westbury and the closest Castle was in Taunton GWR 6999 Capel Dewi Hall took its train onto Taunton where 7025 Sudeley Castle took over for the journey to Plymouth. Acquired from BR in 1964