HMS Caroline: last survivor of the battle of Jutland

HMS Caroline was a Royal Navy, C-Class Light Cruiser. The last of a long line of ships to bear the name HMS Caroline, she was built in Cammel Laird’s shipyard in Birkenhead; her hull was laid down in January 1914, and she was launched on 29 September 1914, completed and commissioned on 4 December 1914. With a gross tonnage of 3,750 tonnes, she is 446 feet long and 42 feet wide.

SHAUN PARKES LDPS

Other Rank’s Mess

Caroline was at the cutting edge of technology at the time, and still holds the record for the fastest build time of any modern warship at just 9 months. She was fitted with the latest in modern guns and gunnery control systems, the latest radio communications systems, and the latest in boiler technology. She could also reach speeds of 30 knots, and so was one of the fastest warships afloat.

She served during the First World War seeing active combat at Jutland and was utilised as an administrative centre during the Second World War.

At the time of her final decommissioning in 2011, HMS Caroline was the second oldest ship in the Royal Navy, only HMS Victory being older. She was modified and served as a Headquarters ship for the Royal Naval Reserve in Belfast (Alexandra Dock). She later underwent an inspection and following repairs to her hull, she was opened to the public as a museum ship on 1st July 2017, still at Alexandra Dock (in the Titanic Quarter at Belfast).

Caroline served mainly in the North Sea during the

Great War, joining the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney islands, where she served as leader of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla. From February to November 1915 Caroline was part of the Grand Fleet’s 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, moving to the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron in early 1916. As part of this Squadron, and under the command of Captain Henry R. Crooke, Caroline participated in the Battle of Jutland 31 May-01 June 1916. In 1917 Caroline was fitted with a ‘flying off platform’, from which Royal Naval Air Service, and later Royal Air Force, aircraft were launched to intercept German airships over the North Sea.

The Battle of Jutland was fought between the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and the Imperial German Navy’s High Seas Fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer. It was the only full-scale clash of battleships in World War 1, and was fought off the North Sea coast of the Jutland Peninsula (Denmark). There had been a period of avoidance of direct naval confrontation after the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915. The British had been happy to largely prevent the German High Seas Fleet from taking to the open sea and threatening the British trade routes, whereas the Germans were not eager to meet the Grand Fleet in open battle.

Eventually the Germans decided to lure out, trap, encircle and destroy a significant portion of the Grand Fleet, partly to break the Royal Navy blockade of Germany and partly to allow German naval vessels access to the Atlantic.

Due to earlier capture of German naval codes however, the Royal Navy learned of the Germans’ plans and Jellicoe led the Grand Fleet into position before the Germans were actually ready.

There followed a largely indecisive battle, which both sides would claim as victories. The battle revealed weaknesses in British munitions, explosives and fuse technology, the Germans largely scoffing at the inefficiency of the older technology. Had the Royal Navy kept abreast of developments in naval armaments, they would undoubtedly have sunk many more German ships. Ultimately the British succeeded in their aim of denying the Germans access to the UK and to the Atlantic, but the Germans sank more ships than the British. Eventually the German Imperial Navy realised that direct fleet-to-fleet actions were not going to be successful and turned to all-out submarine warfare.

Royal Navy reviews of the battle generated serious disagreements, basically polarising opinions based on support of either Jellicoe or Beatty; even now debate over their performance and indeed the actual significance of the battle, continues to this day.

After the First World War, Caroline remained part of the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron. In June 1919 the Squadron was posted to the East India Station. In February 1922, Caroline was temporarily placed in reserve, coming out of reserve in February 1924 to become the headquarters and training ship for the Ulster Division of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve at Belfast. As an HQ and training ship, Caroline, was stripped of her weaponry and some of her boilers by the Belfast shipyard Harland and Wolff.

As was common at the time, Caroline’s removed guns were used with those of other decommissioned cruisers to augment coastal and port defences of the Treaty Ports. The Treaty Ports were three deep water ports in the Irish Free State (now the Irish Republic), at Lough Swilly in County Donegal, Berehaven in County Cork, and Queenstown (now known as Cobh) in Cork Harbour. The reason for the Treaty Ports was the recent experience of the British in combatting the German Navy’s U-Boat (Unterseeboot or submarine) campaign during the First World War, and the real fear that it might recur in the future, hence the need for ports to base antisubmarine vessels with access to the Atlantic covering the west and south approaches of Ireland as well as Ulster. The Treaty Ports were returned to Ireland in 1938.

For the duration of World War 2, Caroline remained in port as the Royal Navy’s Belfast HQ. Belfast was one of the ports used by RN warships involved in escorting the Atlantic and Arctic convoys, notably the 3rd Escort Group. As Belfast’s importance grew as a naval base and HQ, Caroline rapidly ran out of capacity and various buildings were also occupied, with eventually several thousand sailors sported the HMS Caroline cap tally. Such buildings included Belfast Castle, and the Belfast Customs House. Other facilities included under the aegis of Caroline included a depth charge pistol and ‘Hedgehog’ repair workshops.

(Hedgehog was an anti-submarine warfare weapon, which fired a battery of 24 spigot mortars in front of the vessel when attacking a U-Boat head-on. Hedgehog was different to a depth charge in that it was fitted with a contact fuse which detonated when it hit a hard surface, e.g. the hull of a submarine. Hedgehog was much more effective (statistically) then depth charges.)

Caroline was also the unit which administrated the Fleet Air Arm personnel stationed at Belfast Harbour airfield (also known as Sydenham) which operated under the control of RAF Belfast. Eventually the airfield passed to Royal Navy control and was commissioned (in 1943) as HMS Gadwall. After the War, Caroline once again reverted to being a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) establishment, and was the RNVR’s last afloat training base. In 1951, Caroline underwent a refit at Harland and Wolff’s shipyard.

In December 2009, the Royal Naval Reserve Unit moved ashore and recommissioned as the shore establishment HMS Hibernia. (RN shore establishments are sometimes referred to as ‘stone frigates’.)

On 31 March 2011, HMS Caroline, the last surviving warship from the Battle of Jutland, was ceremonially decommissioned with full Naval pomp and ceremony, and her ensign was formally laid up in St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast.

Upon decommissioning, Caroline was placed under the care of the National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth, whilst various schemes were mooted as to what to do with Caroline. These ranged from completely restoring Caroline to WW1 appearance, including restoring her 6 inch and 4 inch guns and removing the large deckhouse from her midships, and moving her to Portsmouth. In 2012 those plans were confirmed, but in October 2012 the Northern Irish Government announced that the National Heritage Memorial Fund had pledged £1million to help to restore Caroline in Belfast and that, therefore, Caroline would indeed remain in Belfast.

Further funding was secured with a grant of £845,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, supporting the conversion work as a museum, with a further grant of £12 million to turn Caroline into a visitor attraction in time for the centenary of Jutland in 2016. Caroline still retains some 85% of her original construction, and is now largely configured as she was during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. This conservation work included the reinstallation of her large guns and torpedo tubes.

The original features include the living quarters, engine rooms and turbines, the compasses and telegraphs on the bridge, and the Captain’s cabin, senior officers’ cabins and sick bay.

HMS Caroline was opened to the public as a museum ship in June 2016. She is still moored in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast, in Alexandra Dock, and remains a vitally important part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy and of our naval heritage.

Shaun Parkes is 59 years old and lives in Lincolnshire. Married with an adult daughter and 3 granddaughters, he is from an RAF family, is a keen photographer and enjoys reading military history. As ‘third generation RAF’ he held a Commission in the Training Branch of the RAF Volunteer Reserve, retiring as a Squadron Leader in 2018, and was an instructor and Staff Officer with the Air Training Corps for over 34 years. He still volunteers; as a Committee Member on the Archaeology and Heritage Special Interest Group, as the Distribution Co-ordinator for Heritage Photography journal, and as the Military Heritage Co-ordinator; as resident photographer for the local park run at Belton House in Grantham; and as a club photographer for Lincoln Rugby Club, especially team photographer for the Ladies Rugby Team. Holds the photographic distinction LDPS (Licentiate of the Disabled Photographers Society) and is currently a student on an MA (Photography) course.