HMS Canopus (1898)

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Career
HMS Canopus during World War I
Ordered:	1896 Programme
Builder:	Portsmouth Dockyard
Laid down:	4 January 1897
Launched:	13 October 1897
Commissioned:	December 1899
Decommissioned:	1919
Status:	Sold for breaking up 18 February 1920
General characteristics
Displacement:	12,950 tons
Length:	431 ft (131.4 m)
Beam:	74 ft (22.6 m)
Draught:	26 ft (7.9 m)
Propulsion:	2 shafts, water tube boilers, vertical triple expansion steam engines, 15,400 ihp
Speed:	18 knots (33 km/h)
Complement:	750
Armament:	4 × 12 in (305 mm) guns 12 × 6 in (152 mm) guns 10 × 3 in (76 mm) guns 4 × 18 in (457 mm) torpedo tubes (underwater)

HMS Canopus was a Canopus-class pre-Dreadnought battleship of the British Royal Navy, built at Portsmouth Dockyard and laid down on 4 January 1897, launched 21 June 1898 and completed in December 1899. She was named after Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky after Sirius.

She was the only one of the class to serve in the Mediterranean fleet instead of the China station until returning to the Channel fleet in 1906 and in that year went into refit to receive Fire control. Further refitting was done while with the reserve at Portsmouth with reduced crew in 1908 - 09; on returning to the fleet she served as the parent ship for the 4th Division at the Nore and with the home fleet from May 1912 and again refitted at Chatham dockyard.

In 1913 HMS Canopus was stationed at Pembroke, Wales and at the outbreak of the First World War joined the 8th battle squadron of the Channel fleet, soon after she was sent to East Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. Late in 1914 she was attached to Sir Christopher Cradock's squadron which went in search of Admiral Maximilian von Spee's East Asian Squadron in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean. Canopus 's slow maximum speed of only 12 knots (22 km/h) meant that she was 300 miles (500 km) south of the rest of Cradock's squadron when he fatally engaged the German force at the Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914. She then made for Stanley in the Falkland Islands, where she was grounded as a local defence fortress. On 8 December 1914 she fired the opening shots of the Battle of the Falkland Islands at extreme range (12,000 yards), even though her rear guns were only loaded with practice shots — one of these shots ricocheted off the water and struck SMS Gneisenau, which fortunately persuaded the German force to break off their attack on the Falklands' radio and coaling stations thus allowing the British force which had arrived at Stanley only the previous day to raise steam and pursue the German force to its destruction. If Canopus had not driven off the German cruisers, the British force would have been caught in harbour, and the outcome of the battle could have been very different.

Canopus' 12-inch (305 mm) guns fire on Turkish defences in the Dardanelles, March 1915.

In February 1915 she was sent to the Mediterranean to support the Dardanelles expedition. While there she was damaged by Turkish gunfire on 28 April and on 2 May 1915 she was involved in a grounding off Gaba Tepe. In October 1915 she transported troops to Salonika. On returning to Britain she became the guard ship on the East Coast until 1918 when she was sent to Devonport, where she became an accommodation ship until being sold to the breakers in 1920.

For other ships of the same name, see HMS Canopus.

[edit] Bibliography

(1900). Appletons' Annual Cyclopædia and Register of Important Events of the Year. New York: Appleton.
Brassey, T. A. (1898). The Naval Annual 1898. Portsmouth: J. Griffith.
(1914). "First Story Told of Falkland Fight." New York Times. December 21.
Hickey, Michael (2003). The First World War. Volume Four: The Mediterranean Front. New York: Routledge.
(1899). "Latest Battleships and Cruisers for the British Navy." Scientific American. April 15.
Pollen, A. J. H. (1919). The British Navy in Battle. London: Chatto and Windus.
Wren, M. F. and W. L. Wyllie (1918). Sea Fights of the Great War. New York: Cassell.