The Royal Navy Patrol Service

This silver badge belonged to Mrs Talpa's father who served in the Royal Navy Patrol Service from 1939-1945.

"In the accounts already published about the Battle of the Atlantic and the long struggle against the U-boats, attention is not unnaturally focused more upon famous destroyer captains and the dashing individuals who later commanded the fast, well-equipped ships of the specially formed submarine-hunting groups, such as Walker of Western Approaches. Little of the limelight falls upon the anti-submarine trawlers of the RN. Patrol Service. Yet these humble, unglamorous little ships with their slow speed, limited armament and comparatively untrained crews were to prove just as much of a headache to the Nazi U-boat fleet as their bigger sisters in the Navy's general service."
A.Cecil Hampshire The Lilliput Fleet (1957)

HMS Europa - The Sparrow's Nest - The Lilliput Fleet - The Silver Bade Navy - Harry Tate's Navy - Churchill's Pirates. These are all synonyms for the Royal Naval Patrol Service which made up the larger part of His Majesty's main Royal Naval Auxiliary Fleet during the second world war. The men of the RNPS were mainly recruited from the fishing industry and usually served on armed, coal-burning fishing trawlers. Their work was minesweeping and anti-submarine patrols and they carried out their duty on the harsh Russian Convoys, protecting the east coast of America, serving in the Mediterranean, Africa and the Far East and mine sweeping and patrolling the entire coast of the British Isles.

The most important distinction given to the Royal Naval Patrol Service was an exclusive silver badge to be worn 4in above the cuff of the left sleeve. Officers and men of the Patrol Service were awarded this badge after a total of six months service at sea. In 1939 Winston Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty 1939 had written the following minute:

FIRST LORD to FOURTH SEA LORD
12.X.1939
I am told that the Minesweepers men have no badge. If this is so it must be remedied at once. I am asking Mr. Bracken to call for designs from Sir Kenneth Clark within one week, after which production must begin with the greatest speed, and distribution as the deliveries come to hand.

The resulting Silver Badge was in the form of a shield, with a sinking shark transfixed to a marlinspike to symbolise the anti-submarine service. Against a background of a fishing net are two mines representing the sweepers, surrounded by a rope with two fishermen's bends representing the fishermen, and topped by a naval crown.