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
Frederick Augustus Berkeley, 5th Earl of Berkeley Berkeley once had on the road:He had always declared that any one might without disgrace be overcome by superior numbers, but that he would never surrender to a single highwayman. As he was crossing Hounslow Heath one night, on his way from Berkeley Castle to London, his travelling carriage was stopped by a man on horseback, who put his head in at the window and said, ‘I believe you are Lord Berkeley?’ ‘I am.’ ‘I believe you have always boasted that you would never surrender to a single highwayman?’ ‘I have.’ ‘Well,’ presenting a pistol, ‘I am a single highwayman,