HMS Ark Royal (1914)

1914 seaplane carrier of the Royal Navy

HMS Ark Royal was the first ship designed and built as a seaplane carrier. Ark Royal was laid down on 7 November 1913 by the Blyth Shipbuilding Company in Blyth, Northumberland, as a freighter, probably intended for the coal for grain trade in the Black Sea. She was purchased in May 1914 and was launched on 5 September 1914. The ship was commissioned on 10 December 1914. Extensive changes to the ship were made in converting her to a seaplane tender, with the superstructure, funnel, and propulsion machinery moved aft and a working deck occupying the forward half of the ship. The deck was not intended as a flying off deck, but for starting and running up of seaplane engines and for recovering damaged aircraft from the sea. The ship was equipped with a large aircraft hold, 150 feet (46 m) long, 45 feet (14 m) wide and 15 feet (5 m) high along with extensive workshops. Two steam cranes on the sides of the forecastle lifted the aircraft through the sliding hatch of the hangar onto the flight deck or into the water. She carried of petrol for her aircraft in standard commercial tins. She could carry five floatplanes and two to four wheeled aircraft. The seaplanes would take off and land in the water alongside the carrier, lifted on and off the ship by cranes; the other aircraft would have to return to land after launch. Her original complement of aircraft consisted of a Short Folder, two Wight Pushers, three Sopwith Type 807 seaplanes and two to four Sopwith Tabloid wheeled aircraft. Ark Royal had an overall length of 366 feet (112 m), a beam of 50 feet (15 m), and a draught of 18 feet (5 m). She normally displaced , with a displacement of at deep load. The ship had one vertical triple expansion steam engine driving one propeller shaft. The ship's three cylindrical boilers generated enough steam to produce from the engine. The ship had a designed speed of ; she made a speed of during her sea trials with in December 1914. Ark Royal carried of fuel oil, enough to give her a range of at and two machine guns. Her crew totalled 180 officers and men, including 60 aviation personnel.

The ship proved to be too slow to work with the Grand Fleet and for operations in the North Sea in general, so Ark Royal was ordered to the Mediterranean in mid January 1915 to support the Gallipoli campaign. Later in the month, the ship's aircrew learned to spot mines from the air and were moderately successful, although they failed to detect the minefield that sank one French and two British predreadnoughts and damaged a British battlecruiser on 18 March. Later in the month, Ark Royal and her aircraft were relieved by No. 3 Squadron of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). In preparation for the squadron's arrival, the ship's crew cleared a vineyard on the island to serve as an airfield and unloaded its crated aircraft on 26–27 March. From 31 March to 7 April, Ark Royal and her companions made several fake landing attempts and her aircraft bombarded the port of Smyrna with little effect. When she returned to Tenedos on 8 April, she exchanged her Tabloids, which had never flown from the ship, for a pair of Sopwith Schneider single seat floatplanes. In addition, she received two Sopwith Type 860s, another Wight Pusher, and a Short Type 166, all two seat floatplanes, as replacements. The ship had no room for all these aircraft and she used the collier Penmorvalt to store them and for additional workshop space. Her aircraft resumed reconnaissance and observation missions over the Dardanelles; aircraft discovered a large ammunition dump on 12 April, and provided corrective data to direct gunfire from onto the target. Ark Royals aircraft provided support to the Australian and New Zealand troops at Anzac Cove as they landed on 25 April on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Two days later, the ship was taken under fire by the Ottoman predreadnought Ottoman battleship Turgut Reis, firing across the peninsula, and she had to move in a hurry to avoid being hit. A month later, the battle on the peninsula had bogged down and the success of the German submarine in sinking two British predreadnoughts forced Ark Royal to move to a safer anchorage at Imbros at the end of May. There she became a depot ship for all the seaplanes in the area, while her own aircraft continued to support operations at Gallipoli. On occasion, aircraft were loaned out to other ships for reconnaissance or observation missions. The ship left Imbros on 1 November for Mytilene, from where her aircraft flew aerial reconnaissance missions over Smyrna, before she continued onwards to Salonika, where she arrived on 8 November. While based there, her aircraft supported British troops fighting the Bulgarians, spotted for British ships conducting shore bombardments, and conducted anti submarine patrols. At this time, Ark Royal operated five Short 166s and a couple of Sopwith seaplanes. On 27 March 1917, the ship was transferred to Mudros to serve as a depot ship for all the seaplanes assigned to No. 2 Wing RNAS, which controlled all RNAS aircraft in the area. By the end of 1917, she operated a mixture of Short Type 184 and Sopwith Baby aircraft. On the morning of 20 January 1918, the Ottoman battlecruiser Ottoman battlecruiser Yavûz Sultân Selîm, together with the light cruiser Ottoman cruiser Midilli (formerly the German Goeben and Breslau, and still with German crews), sortied from the Dardanelles to attack British warships based at Mudros. Yavuz struck a mine shortly after they exited the mouth of the Dardanelles so they switched targets and sank two British monitors off Imbros Island. As they were returning to the Dardanelles, the two ships were attacked by two of Ark Royals Sopwith Babies with bombs. One Baby was quickly shot down and the other was forced to make an emergency landing with engine problems off Imbros; the pilot was able to taxi the aircraft onto a beach and it was recovered several days later. On 3 April, the ship was transferred to the island of Syros, where she could support the seaplanes of No. 62 Wing of the Royal Air Force (RAF) on anti submarine patrols; part of the former No. 2 Wing RNAS redesignated when the RNAS and the Royal Flying Corps were merged to form the RAF. Ark Royal was transferred to Piraeus in October and was still there when the Armistice of Mudros with Turkey was signed on 31 October. The ship joined the Allied fleet that occupied Constantinople after the surrender.

After the war, Ark Royal transported aircraft across the Black Sea to Batumi, where they were ferried across the Caucasus to the British naval forces supporting White Russian forces fighting the Bolsheviks in the Caspian Sea during the Russian Civil War. The ship was withdrawn from the Black Sea in late 1919 and disembarked her seaplanes at Malta to load a dozen Airco DH.9 bombers and 181 personnel of the supporting Z Force for transport to British Somaliland. The ship arrived in Berbera on 30 December and the squadron was unloaded to support the air and land campaign against Diiriye Guure. Ark Royal served during this campaign solely as a depot and repair ship for the RAF. She was withdrawn before its conclusion and transferred to the Black Sea to support the White Russian forces there as they began to collapse. The ship twice ferried refugees from the Caucasian coast to the Crimea and, after the second voyage, had to be fumigated at Constantinople after an outbreak of typhus among her passengers. During the summer of 1920, Ark Royal ferried RAF aircraft and personnel to Basra. She then returned to Britain for a refit and was put into reserve at Rosyth in November. She was recommissioned in September 1922 to transport 4 Squadron, equipped with a dozen Bristol F.2 Fighters, out to the Dardanelles during the Chanak crisis. The aircraft were ferried semi assembled and then transferred to the aircraft carrier where they were fully assembled. On 11 October, the F.2s flew from the carrier to an airfield at Kilya on the European side of the straits. The ship remained in the area until she was given a brief refit at Malta in early 1923. Now equipped with Fairey IIID seaplanes, Ark Royal returned to the Dardanelles until she was transferred back to the United Kingdom late in the year. Upon her arrival, the ship was placed back in reserve and became the depot ship for the reserve of minesweepers at Sheerness until 1930. She also served as an aircraft transport and was present in Scapa Flow, having just delivered some aircraft, on 14 October when the battleship was sunk by the U 47 was launched in 1938 As the closest ship to Royal Oak, Pegasus was able to rescue some 400 survivors. Pegasus was converted to the prototype fighter catapult ship in November 1940, These fighters were supposed to defend convoys against attacks from Focke Wulf Fw 200 maritime patrol bombers and to prevent them from radioing location reports to U boats. If out of range of land, the fighters would have to ditch at sea and hope to be recovered by a ship from their convoy. The ship escorted nine convoys between December 1940 and July 1941. At some point during the war, the ship's anti aircraft armament was supplemented with a pair of Oerlikon 20 mm light anti aircraft guns mounted in the bow, the ship's bridge was enlarged and the mast was replaced with a tripod mast bearing a Type 291 air warning radar. The ship then became a seaplane training ship again, hosting 763 NAS aboard from 20 April 1942 to 13 February 1944. Pegasus then became a barracks ship until May 1946 and was then listed for disposal in June. She was sold to R. C. Ellerman on 18 October, renamed Anita I, and registered under the Panamanian flag. Under the management of the Compania de Navigation Ellanita, the ship sailed from Cardiff to Antwerp in October 1947 to begin conversion to a freighter. The work ceased in early 1948 and Anita I was seized by her creditors and auctioned off to a Dutch shipbreaking firm on 16 June 1949. She was resold once more before the ship was purchased by the British Iron and Steel Corporation in October 1950. Later that year, the ship was broken up for scrap at Thos. W. Ward, Grays, Essex.