HMS Zinnia was an minesweeping sloop of the Royal Navy, built in 1915 at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson yard, at Wallsend in the United Kingdom.It was sold to Belgium on 19 April 1920 to join their new Corps of Destroyers and Sailors. Design and construction The Azalea class was based on the previous , but with a heavier gun armament. They were designed at the start of the First World War as relatively fast minesweepers that could also carry out various miscellaneous duties in support of the fleet such as acting as dispatch vessels or carrying out towing operations, but as the war continued and the threat from German submarines grew, became increasingly involved in anti-submarine duties. Zinnia was long overall and between perpendiculars, with a beam of and a draught of . Displacement was normal. Two cylindrical boilers fed steam to a triple expansion steam engine rated at , giving a speed of . Zinnia had a main armament of two 4.7-inch (120 mm) guns, with two 3-pounder (47 mm) anti-aircraft guns also carried. She had a crew of 90 officers and other ranks. Zinnia was ordered on 4 May 1915. She was built by Swan Hunter at their Wallsend shipyard and was launched on 12 August 1915, and was completed on 25 September 1915. Service First World War Following commissioning, Zinnia joined the First Sloop Flotilla, based at Queenstown (now Cobh). On 28 March 1916, Zinnia spotted the German submarine ESE of the Fastnet Rock, shooting twice at the submarine, which dived away unharmed, Zinnias shells falling short. On 29 March, U-44 torpedoed the sloop , which did not sink. Zinnia and sister ship were ordered to go to Begonias aid, and the damaged sloop was towed into Queenstown. On 20 April 1916, Zinnia came across the German submarine , south-west of Ireland, just after U-69 had sunk the steamer , forcing the submarine to dive away, and dropped two depth charges, but U-69 was unharmed. On 23 October 1916, the sloop was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine west of Cape Clear Island. Zinnia and were ordered out from Queenstown to pick up her survivors, but at first failed to find them, and were joined by the cruiser . Eventually, 12 survivors were picked up. On 8 March 1917, Zinnia encountered a German submarine, possibly , off Fastnet, and opened fire, claiming an apparent hit