HMS Bellerophon (1907): Reviewed by a King and a Tsar Before Ever Firing a Shot

A Dreadnought Fit for Royalty

HMS Bellerophon was built at Portsmouth Dockyard, ordered on 30 October 1906, laid down that December, and launched on 27 July 1907, completing in February 1909 at a cost of just over £1.76 million. As lead ship of her class, she displaced nearly 18,600 tons at normal load, carried ten 12-inch guns in five twin turrets, and could make 21 knots, a genuinely powerful dreadnought battleship for her era. She commissioned on 20 February 1909 under Captain Hugh Evan-Thomas and joined the Nore Division of the Home Fleet, and that July had the considerable honour of being reviewed by King Edward VII and Tsar Nicholas II together during Cowes Week, a striking image of pre-war European royalty inspecting the very ships whose successors would, within a few short years, be fighting on opposite sides of the continent's greatest catastrophe.

Into the Grand Fleet

Bellerophon spent 1909 through 1913 on combined fleet manoeuvres and training exercises, and transferred to the 4th Battle Squadron on 10 March 1914. She took part in test mobilisation that July, and after a collision with the merchant ship SS St Clair, was recalled to join the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow on 26 July 1914, days before the outbreak of war, settling into the North Sea sweeps and gunnery drills that made up the bulk of Grand Fleet activity through 1914 and 1915.

Jutland

Bellerophon fought at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, positioned fourteenth ship from the head of the battle line. She opened fire on the German battlecruiser SMS Derfflinger and scored one hit that glanced off the conning tower, firing 62 twelve-inch shells and 14 four-inch shells over the course of the engagement. She came through the battle without significant damage, though a splinter destroyed the rangefinder in her B turret, a relatively minor scar from one of history's largest naval engagements. She took part in the attempted ambush of the German High Seas Fleet during the Action of 19 August 1916, though without achieving significant contact.

Witness to Tragedy at Scapa Flow

Bellerophon continued patrol and training duties through the war's remaining years, serving as junior flagship of the 4th Battle Squadron between June and September 1917. On 9 July that year, she was present when HMS Vanguard suffered a catastrophic magazine explosion at Scapa Flow, one of the worst accidental losses in Royal Navy history, killing over 800 men in an instant. Bellerophon herself was present at Rosyth on 21 November 1918 to witness the surrender of the German fleet, a fittingly momentous final wartime scene for a ship that had already been reviewed by two of Europe's monarchs and fought at its largest naval battle.

Obsolete and Sold for Scrap

Bellerophon was converted to a gunnery training ship at the Nore in March 1919, by which point she was already considered thoroughly obsolete, a remarkably swift fall from grace for a ship barely a decade old, a reflection of just how fast naval technology had moved during the war years. She was replaced in that training role by her sister ship HMS Superb in September 1919, completed a final refit at Devonport in early 1920, and was listed for sale in August 1921, sold that November to the Slough Trading Company for £44,000. She was resold to a German company the following year and departed Plymouth under tow for Germany on 14 September 1922, to be broken up in the country whose fleet she had once helped face down at Jutland.