Qualla: HMS Prince George (1895)

HMS Prince George (1895): Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Queen Mary launched her in 1895. Twenty-six years later she ran aground on a Dutch beach, was looted for scrap, and was left as a breakwater - and in 2014 the dunes simply grew over what was left of her. HMS Prince George was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Majestic class, named for the future King George V at a moment when British naval power was the unchallenged fact of the world. She fought at Gallipoli, took a torpedo off Cape Helles that failed to explode, served three different fleets, and ended her career under the wrong flag, in tow to a German scrapyard. She never made it. A storm broke her loose off Camperduin on the night of 30 December 1921, and what could not be carried away the wreckers left to the sand.

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HMS Prince George (1895): A Royal Launch

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

She was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard on 10 September 1894. Less than a year later - 22 August 1895 - the Duchess of York stepped up to the platform and broke a bottle of champagne against her bow. The Duchess would later be Queen Mary; her husband, standing beside her, was Pr...

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HMS Prince George (1895): Years of Peacetime Collisions

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The deepest danger to a peacetime battleship was not enemy action but her own neighbors. On 17 October 1903, Prince George was rammed in heavy seas off Spain by her sister ship at nine knots, taking a large hole below the waterline on her starboard quarter. She nearly sank. She m...

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HMS Prince George (1895): Mine-Bumper

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The First World War found her with the 7th Battle Squadron, an aging unit of pre-dreadnoughts kept on for tasks the new dreadnoughts could not be spared for. In February 1915 she sailed for the Dardanelles as a mine-bumper - a battleship deliberately exposed to swept water to dra...

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HMS Prince George (1895): Sold and Sold Again

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

She reverted to Prince George in February 1919. Placed on the disposal list at Sheerness in February 1920, she was sold for scrapping to a British firm on 21 September 1921 and resold a few months later to a German firm, which contracted to tow her to Germany to be cut up. The vo...

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HMS Prince George (1895): Under the Sand

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What happened next was practical. Salvors stripped her of valuable materials - copper, brass, anything that could be cut free in the open weather. What remained was too large to move and too useful to remove, so they left her as a breakwater. For decades her hull poked out of the...

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