She was one of the "little ships of Dunkirk", making a record 7 trips and rescuing men in the evacuation of Dunkirk. By , her hull had been reconstructed and she is sitting at Gillingham Pier on the River Medway. Her first task in was evacuating Kent children from Gravesend to East Anglia. She was refitted in the shipyard of the General Steam Navigation Company Deptford Creek , her aft being modified to take minesweeping gear. She operated patrolling the Straits of Dover. HMS Medway Queen became part of the flotilla of little ships.
Medway Queen was fitted with a pounder gun and two machine guns. She was to make seven crossings. On her first trip, soldiers were taken off the beaches in lifeboats and ferried to the ship.
On her return to Dover, her arrival coinciding with an air raid. She shot down a German aircraft outside the harbour. The "Brighton Belle" ran over sunken wreckage and began to sink. All of her passengers and crew were rescued by the Medway Queen without loss of life, and heavily overloaded she made the harbour.
On her second trip she took the soldiers directly off the beach- which required more skill, but was a lot faster. They used a technique with oily bags to conceal their distinctive wash from patrolling aircraft. On later trips, the Medway Queen penetrated the damaged Dunkerque port and took off men from a concrete jetty or mole. Men were discharged at Ramsgate rather than Dover, where the vessel was re-oiled and reprovisioned. This was the Medway Queen's seventh trip. She was at the mole in Dunkerque when a destroyer moored astern of her was driven forwards by an explosion and smashed her starboard paddle box, she sustained considerable damage.
Medway Queen limped back to Dover with French soldiers on board. By then, she had rescued 7, men. She gained four awards for gallantry, having shot down three enemy aircraft, made seven crossings and rescued men. In view of this remarkable achievement in rescuing so many Allied troops from France, she earned the title of "The Heroine of Dunkirk".
