Qualla: HMS Ariel (1911)

HMS Ariel (1911): Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Symonds & Co, Public domain. She was named for an airy spirit. Shakespeare's Ariel, the wind-sailor of The Tempest who can fly faster than thought - and possibly also the biblical spirit of the same name; the Royal Navy left the genealogy ambiguous. HMS Ariel was the tenth and last ship in the Royal Navy to carry that name. She was laid down at the Woolston yard of John I. Thornycroft, launched on 26 September 1911, and ran her trials at 29 knots, slightly faster than the standard Acheron-class destroyer, slightly longer, slightly more powerful. The Thornycroft yard called the type a "Thornycroft special." Ariel had a complement of seventy men, two 4-inch guns, and 21-inch torpedo tubes. She would spend her short career haunting one stretch of grey water - the Heligoland Bight - and she would die there.

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Image: Symonds & Co | Public domain

HMS Ariel (1911): First Patrol of the War

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Symonds & Co, Public domain. On 5 August 1914, one day after Britain declared war on Germany, Ariel was towing a Royal Navy submarine across the North Sea toward Terschelling, off the Dutch coast. With a cruiser and a second submarine in company, she released the tow, and the two submarines slipped beneath t...

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Image: Symonds & Co | Public domain

HMS Ariel (1911): Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank, Jutland

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Surgeon Oscar Parkes, Public domain. Three weeks after that first patrol, Ariel was at the Battle of Heligoland Bight on 28 August 1914 as part of the Harwich Force's First Destroyer Flotilla, under Commander Dashwood Moir, and she shared in the prize money for the battle. Five months later she was at the Battle of ...

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Image: Surgeon Oscar Parkes | Public domain

HMS Ariel (1911): Ramming U-12

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Symonds & Co, Public domain. On 10 March 1915, off the Aberdeenshire coast, Ariel and two of her sister destroyers were searching for a German submarine reported by a trawler. At 10:12 in the morning they sighted U-12 about two nautical miles away. All three destroyers turned toward her. U-12 crash-dived and...

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Image: Symonds & Co | Public domain

HMS Ariel (1911): Conversion and End

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Symonds & Co, Public domain. By 1917 the war had shifted underwater. The British decided to try to seal the Heligoland Bight - to lay so many mines across the entrances to the German naval bases that no U-boat could safely leave port. Ariel and her sister Sandfly were converted to minelaying destroyers, each...

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Image: Symonds & Co | Public domain