HMS Albemarle (1901): Once Commanded by the Man Who Would Die in Antarctica

A Solid Edwardian Battleship

HMS Albemarle was a Duncan-class battleship built at Chatham Dockyard, her keel laid on 1 January 1900 and launched on 5 March 1901, christened by Lady Kennedy, wife of Admiral Sir William Kennedy. She was not commissioned until November 1903, a fairly typical gap for a battleship of her era, entering service armed with four 12-inch guns in twin turrets, a substantial secondary battery of twelve 6-inch guns, and a top speed of 19 knots, respectable if unremarkable figures for a pre-dreadnought of her generation.

Commanded by a Future Polar Legend

Albemarle's most unexpected historical footnote came from one of her commanding officers. In 1907, while serving with the Atlantic Fleet, she was under the command of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the very man who would go on to lead the doomed Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole and die on the return journey in 1912. It was under Scott's command, on 11 February 1907, that Albemarle collided with the battleship HMS Commonwealth, suffering minor bow damage. It is a strange thing to consider: several years before he became one of the most famous names in the history of polar exploration, Scott was simply another Royal Navy captain having an unremarkable, if slightly awkward, day at sea.

A Fairly Standard Prewar Career

Beyond that one memorable command, Albemarle's prewar service followed a familiar pattern for a battleship of her type: postings with the Mediterranean Fleet from 1903 to 1905, the Channel Fleet from 1905 to 1907, and the Atlantic Fleet from 1907 to 1910, before transferring to the Home Fleet and eventually serving as a gunnery training ship by 1913, passing on her accumulated expertise to a new generation of sailors as she edged toward obsolescence.

War, and Tragedy in a Storm

When war broke out in August 1914, Albemarle joined the Grand Fleet's Northern Patrol, and spent the following year on Channel defence duties, guarding against the possibility of invasion. Her war took a genuinely tragic turn on 7 November 1915, while she was transiting toward the Mediterranean heavily loaded with spare ammunition. Caught in severe rough seas, her forward bridge was washed away entirely, killing everyone stationed on it. It was a brutal reminder that a battleship's greatest danger was not always the enemy, and that the sea itself could inflict losses just as final as any torpedo or shell.

A Late Career as an Icebreaker

After repairs, Albemarle took on a role about as far removed from her original battleship design brief as could be imagined: serving as a guard ship and icebreaker at Murmansk between January and September 1916, helping keep the vital northern Russian supply port open through the brutal Arctic winter. She was refitted at Liverpool between October 1916 and March 1917 before finally settling into reserve at Devonport for the remainder of the war.

A Quiet End

Albemarle was sold for scrapping to the Cohen Shipbreaking Company on 19 November 1919 and arrived at Swansea for breaking up in April 1920, closing out a career that had taken in a collision under a future polar hero, a fatal North Sea storm, and a stint keeping the ice at bay off the Russian Arctic coast, a genuinely varied life for a ship that started out as a fairly conventional Edwardian battleship.