HMS Hibernia (1905): The Battleship That Launched Naval Aviation

The Last of Her Class

HMS Hibernia was built at Devonport Dockyard, laid down in January 1904, launched in June 1905 and completed in December 1906, the final ship of the King Edward VII-class pre-dreadnought battleships to be completed.

She commissioned on 2 January 1907, initially serving as flagship of the Rear Admiral, Atlantic Fleet, before transferring to the Channel Fleet that February, and later joining the Home Fleet's Second Division and, subsequently, the 3rd Battle Squadron.

The First Aircraft Launched From a Ship Under Way

HMS Hibernia's place in history was secured in a single afternoon during the Royal Fleet Review in Weymouth Bay in May 1912, sources variously citing the 2nd, 4th or 9th of that month.

Commander Charles Samson, already a pioneer of British naval aviation, took off from a platform fitted to HMS Hibernia's foredeck flying the aircraft 'S.38', becoming the first man in the world to launch an aeroplane from a warship that was actually under way, steaming at 10.5 knots at the moment of takeoff, rather than sitting stationary at anchor as earlier experimental launches had required.

It is particularly difficult to overstate how significant that single flight proved to be: it demonstrated conclusively that aircraft could operate from moving warships, the essential proof of concept that, over the following three decades, would grow into the aircraft carrier and transform naval warfare more completely than perhaps any other single technological development of the twentieth century.

HMS Hibernia, a comparatively conventional pre-dreadnought battleship in every other respect, earned herself a permanent footnote in the history of naval aviation for that one afternoon in Weymouth Bay.

War Service in the North Sea and Dardanelles

HMS Hibernia's 3rd Battle Squadron was assigned to the Grand Fleet on the outbreak of war in 1914, based at Rosyth and taking part in North Sea patrols, including operations supporting the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915.

In November 1915, she was detached for service in the Dardanelles campaign, covering the evacuation of Allied troops from Cape Helles in January 1916, a difficult and dangerous operation carried out under continued threat from Turkish guns, before returning to the Grand Fleet that February.

A Quiet Final Chapter

HMS Hibernia transferred to Nore Command by May 1916, and in October 1917 paid off into the Nore Reserve at Chatham Dockyard, where she served out the remainder of the war as an overflow accommodation ship, a considerably less glamorous role than her earlier record-setting flight had suggested might lie ahead of her.

She was decommissioned in 1919, sold for scrapping to the Stanlee Shipbreaking Company in November 1921, and finally towed to Germany to be broken up in November 1922, closing out the career of a battleship whose lasting legacy had nothing to do with her guns or armour, and everything to do with a single, revolutionary flight from her foredeck a decade earlier.