Commander-in-Chief, South Atlantic. She was involved in an unfortunate incident on 13 October 1939 while at Rosyth, ramming the old S-class destroyer . Sabre was under repair for over six months. Jervis Bay then became a convoy escort in May 1940, based at the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda. Given brief repairs at Halifax, Nova Scotia, she became the sole escort for the 37 merchant ships of Convoy HX 84 from Bermuda and Halifax to Britain (Jervis Bay escorted a convoy from Bermuda which merged at sea with a convoy from Halifax, since larger convoys suffered fewer losses than smaller ones due to the relatively smaller defensive perimeter of the larger surface area). When the convoy encountered the German warship Admiral Scheer about south-southwest of Reykjavík, the captain of Jervis Bay, Edward Fegen, ordered the convoy to scatter, and set his own ship on a course towards the German warship to draw its fire. Jervis Bay was hopelessly outgunned and outranged by the 28 cm (11inch) guns of the German ship, but it attacked the larger ship with its guns, firing more to distract the German ship from the merchantmen than with hopes of doing any damage. Although the German's shells ravaged Jervis Bay, and Fegen was wounded and many crewmen killed, Fegen and the surviving crew fought on until their ship was sunk. Captain Fegen and many of the crew went down with the ship. Jervis Bays sacrifice bought enough time for the convoy to begin to scatter. According to some sources, further time was bought by the freighter SS Beaverford, which engaged Admiral Scheer for over four hours. However, the account published after the war by the captain of Admiral Scheer and the timings of the sinking show that there was no such engagement. Beaverford fled with the other ships, but was sunk during the night. In the end, the German cruiser was only able to sink five merchant ships, and the remainder of the convoy escaped. Sixty-eight survivors of Jervis Bays crew of 254 were picked up by the neutral Swedish ship Stureholm (three later died of their wounds). Guy Byam was one of the survivors of the sinking; he was later killed while covering an air raid over Germany for the BBC. Captain Fegen was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross as a result of this action. The citation for his award reads: For valour in challenging hopeless