HMS Liverpool (1909)
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The fifth HMS Liverpool of the Royal Navy was a 4800 ton light cruiser of the Bristol class. She was built by Vickers Sons & Maxim at Barrow, now more famous for its building of submarines than of surface ships. She had the distinction of being the first ship of the Liverpool lineage to be built in the 20th century, not to mention the first Liverpool to be built of steel. She was launched on 30 October 1909 and was armed with 2 x 6-inch and 10 x 4-inch guns that was a potent group of weapons if used correctly. She was commissioned in October the following year.
She served with the formidable Home Fleet from 1910-14. At the outbreak of World War I she joined the prestigious and powerful Grand Fleet, taking part in the battle at Heliogoland Bight on the 28th August 1914. In this she served with distinction, assisting in the rescue of the crew of the German cruiser Mainz. Two months later, she stood by Audacious after that ship had been mined. Audacious eventually blew up as a result of the mining and the resulting flying debris caused the death of a petty officer onboard Liverpool. At the end of 1915, the year of the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign, she was detached from the Grand Fleet to allow her to search off the African Coast for the armed merchant cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm which was proving to be a deadly nuisance in the grand scheme of things for the British war effort.
In June 1915, she underwent boiler repairs at Liverpool. Upon the completion of that work later in the year, Liverpool was deployed to the Adriatic, where she remained until the end of the war in 1918, relatively unscathed by the potential dangers that she faced. From 1918–1919 she took part in operations in the Black Sea during the Russian Civil War. She was placed in Reserve in 1920 and subsequently put on the disposal list that same year. On 8 November 1921, in an ironical twist, she was sold for breaking up to the very nation that she had fought against: Germany.
See HMS Liverpool for other ships of the name.
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