HMS Melampus (1890): Briefly Commanded by a Future King

Built at Barrow

HMS Melampus was laid down at Vickers in Barrow-in-Furness in 1889 and launched on 2 August 1890, an Apollo-class protected cruiser, one of a large class of fast, lightly armoured cruisers built to protect British trade routes and project naval power across the far reaches of the Empire, armed with two 6-inch guns and six 4.7-inch quick-firing guns and capable of a respectable 19.7 knots.

A Prince at the Helm

HMS Melampus's most notable claim to historical interest came remarkably early in her career: in 1891, Prince George of Wales, the future King George V, assumed nominal command of the ship, a position he held until relinquishing it in January 1892. It was, as with so many royal naval postings of the era, a largely symbolic arrangement designed to give a young prince genuine naval experience and standing within the service rather than day-to-day operational responsibility, but it remains a genuinely striking footnote for what was, in most other respects, a fairly ordinary protected cruiser.

Trials, Reviews and an Unfortunate Grounding

HMS Melampus underwent machinery trials at Portsmouth and compass swinging at Spithead on 5 July 1892, and went on to take part in two of the great royal fleet reviews of the era: the Naval Review marking Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee on 26 June 1897, and the fleet review held for King Edward VII's coronation on 16 August 1902, both grand public showcases of British naval strength. Her record was not entirely spotless, however; on 16 January 1901 she was involved in an incident in which she accidentally ran HMS Sybille aground, an embarrassing mishap for any warship, however routine such collisions and groundings occasionally were in an era of crowded harbours and less sophisticated navigation.

Welcoming the Japanese Navy to Cork

HMS Melampus played host in August 1902 to the Japanese cruisers Asama and Takasago at Cork, Ireland, a genuinely notable piece of naval diplomacy at a time when Britain and Japan were drawing closer together, a relationship that would be formalised the following year in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. She was withdrawn from active duty to serve as guard ship at Kingstown, Ireland, in 1903, settling into the kind of steady, unglamorous colonial administrative role that so many ageing Victorian cruisers found themselves filling in their later years.

Sold Before the War She Never Saw

HMS Melampus was sold for scrap on 12 July 1910 for £9,000, her career ending several years before the outbreak of the First World War that would go on to claim so many of her sister ships and successors, closing the book on a cruiser whose modest, workmanlike record was made memorable chiefly by the young prince who had once, however nominally, held her command.