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Albion
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HMS Albion was a British Canopus-class pre-Dreadnought battleship of approximately 14,000 tonnes, with a main armament of 4 x 12 inch (305 mm) guns and was built by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Co. Ltd, launched in 1898 and commissioned in 1901, serving on the China Station until 1905. She spent the next few years in home waters, until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, when she proceeded to join the Cape and East Africa Station. In 1915 she, along with others of the obsolete Canopus-class were in the Mediterranean, bombarding strategic Turkish positions in the Dardanelles. While doing so, two of her sister ships, HMS Goliath and HMS Ocean were sunk in the engagements, and Albion herself was badly damaged while supporting the Gallipoli landings.
On 24 May 1915 Albion became beached on a sandbank off Gaba Tepe and while stranded was struck over a hundred times by Turkish artillery. Fortunately the Turkish guns lacked penetration and Albion suffered fewer than a dozen casualties. She was only towed free after efforts were made to reduce weight and also by using the recoil of firing her main guns simultaneously.
Albion returned home after these damaging engagements in 1916 and was scrapped three years later.
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Canopus
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HMS Canopus was a pre-Dreadnought battleship of the British Royal Navy, built at Portsmouth Dockyard and laid down on the 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 17 knots meant that she was 300 miles 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.
In February 1915 she was sent to the Mediterranean to support the Dardanelles expedition. While there she was damaged by Turkish gunfire on the 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 back 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.
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Goliath
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HMS Goliath was one of the six Canopus-class battleships built by the Royal Navy in the late 19th century. She was laid down at the Chatham Dockyard on January 4, 1897 and was launched in March 23, 1898. She was commissioned in March 1900.
In 1900, the ship was sent to China until 1903. The vessel joined the Mediterranean Fleet in May 1905 and then was transferred to the Channel Fleet in December of the same year, and remained there until March 1907. Goliath was sent to Sheerness as a part of the Fourth Fleet. In 1913, she was mothballed and joined the Third Fleet also known as the Pembroke Reserve.
During World War I, on August 1914 she joined the battle squadron operating out of Devonport and was later sent to Loch Ewe to defend the Grand Fleet anchorage. In September 1914, Goliath was dispatched to the East Indies for escort duty against German warships in the area. In November 1914 she took part in the blockade operation against the SMS Konigsberg in the Rufiji River during which crew-member Commander Henry Peel Ritchie won the Victoria Cross.
Commanded by Captain Thomas Lawrie Shelford, Goliath was part of the Allied fleet during naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign, supporting the landing at X Beach during the landing at Cape Helles on 25 April 1915.
On the night of 12-13 May 1915 Goliath was stationed in Morto Bay off Cape Helles, along with HMS Cornwallis and a screen of five destroyers. Around 1 am on 13 May, the Turkish torpedo boat Muavenet, which was manned by a combined German and Turkish crew, eluded the destroyers HMS Beagle and HMS Bulldog and closed on the battleships. Muavenet fired three torpedoes which struck Goliath, causing a massive explosion — the ship capsized almost immediately taking 570 of the 700-strong crew to the bottom, including Captain Shelford. For sinking Goliath, the captain of Muavenet, Kaptainleutnant Rudolph Firle, was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class as well as Austro-Hungarian and Turkish decorations.
In the immediate aftermath of the sinking of Goliath the valuable modern battleship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, was recalled from the Dardanelles. The subsequent loss of battleships Triumph at Anzac and Majestic at Cape Helles, both torpedoed by U-21, resulted in a further reduction in naval support.
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Ocean
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The fourth HMS Ocean was a battleship displacing 12,950 tons and armed with four 12-inch and twelve six-inch guns. She was launched in 1898, designed to be able to transit the Suez Canal. From the Mediterranean Station she transferred to the China Station in 1901 before paying off in 1905 and becoming part of the Chatham Reserve. In 1906 she joined the China Fleet and returned to the Mediterranean in 1908. In 1910 she returned home and joined the Fourth Division of the Home Fleet.
Two months after the outbreak of World War I she was dispatched to the East Indies for the protection of the Persian Gulf convoys. In early February 1915 she aided the defence of the Suez Canal against the Turks and then sailed to take part in naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign. She became part of a squadron comprising HM Ships Albion, Irresistible, Majestic, Triumph, and Vengeance, which from March 1, 1915 bombarded various forts and strait defences. On March 18, after standing by the disabled Irresistible, Ocean herself struck a mine and was almost simultaneously crippled by shelling. She sank that night.
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