Taken this day, 2013 - ready to launch
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Taking out a skiff at Porty

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The ignominious end of HMS Caledonia: the thread about how the Navy’s longest ship ended up as scrap metal on the Forth seabed

This thread was originally written and published in August 2023.

Q. What was the largest ship in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WW2?

A. As any respectable naval anorak knows, it was the 47,000t, 860ft long battleship HMS Hood, the “Mighty Hood“, pride of the fleet and largest warship afloat. Right? Or… was it the Bismarck?

No, the largest ship in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WW2 was the 56,500t, 956-ft long training ship HMS Caledonia; until 1936 the Cunard-White Star liner RMS Majestic, which until 1922 had been the Hamburg-Amerika liner SS Bismarck. Until 1935, the largest ship in the world

The Bismarck was the 3rd and largest of three Hamburg-Amerika liners built immediately prior to WW1; the others were the Vaterland and Imperator. They were ordered to reclaim dominance and German national pride in the Transatlantic liner stakes from the British Cunard and White Star liners. They were to do this by being both the largest and grandest liners afloat. Bismarck was the last of the trio but before she was laid down, the Hamburg-Amerika line found out that the new Cunard liner Aquitania was to be longer than her, so they hastily rejigged the design to add an extra 6 feet on. They needn’t had bothered, they had made been misinformed and Aquitania actually ended up being 50ft shorter than Bismarck.

It was too late to change the design however and it was too late for her sister Imperator, which had been given the most embarrassingly awful nose job to lengthen her by the vainglorious addition of a massive bronze eagle figurehead which was meant to make her 1ft longer than Aquitania. Fortunately for her appearance this partially fell off during Atlantic storms within a year, and was removed.

Bismarck was launched in June 1914 by a granddaughter of the Iron Chancellor, but this ceremony was jinxed when she fluffed the swinging of the champagne bottle and it only broke on the second attempt: none other than Kaiser Wilhelm II stepped in to give it his best swing. The outbreak of war found her without a purpose, and construction ground to a halt beyond maintenance work. During the war she was stripped of valuable components, wiring and piping and all her brass and copper. The incomplete hulk was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Versailles as reparations for the loss of the White Star liner Britannic (sister of Titanic), which had struck a German mine and sunk in 1916 while serving as a hospital ship. This was the largest ship lost in the war, but although she sank in just 55 minutes, all but 30 souls on board were saved. Her sister Imperator went to Cunard as a replacement for the Lusitania, the ill-fated liner whose sinking had outraged America and helped drag that nation into the war against Germany.

White Star sent representatives and shipyard engineers from Harland & Wolff in Belfast to Hamburg to supervise completion of their new possession. The whole ship needed re-wiring, and a mysterious fire that damaged her during completion and which the British put down to sabotage by the German workers was probably an electrical fault: this would be a recurrent theme. She completed in March 1922 and White Star officers were sent to supervise her trials by officers and men of Hamburg-Amerika line. This was marred by briefly running aground, but after a week she was accepted and handed over. Her German name was painted out and replaced with Majestic.

A White Star crew arrived and sailed her to Southampton, during which time they repainted her funnels into company colours. She arrived exactly 10 years to the day that the Titanic had departed on her ill-fated maiden voyage. Not only the largest in the world, she was arguably the most opulent, designed by the French architect Charles Mewès. Her German builders had trunked the boiler uptakes around the ships sides (rather than through the centre), to allow for huge, uninterrupted interior spaces, and spared no expense on the specification

Despite being a foreigner in a time when ocean liners were a symbol of national prestige, she was made White Star flagship and was the pride of the fleet. Her first official duties were to be inspected by King George V and Queen Mary, before heading for New York. She settled down to a glamorous 1920s career on the Atlantic, but one that was always marred by the occasional spontaneous fire in her electrical system, and growing cracks in her decks (which grew to 100ft long) as a result of the lengthening job.

The Depression hit the Transatlantic liners hard, already struggling from a downturn in migrating passengers, and in White Star’s case, poor corporate management. The Majestic frequently found herself on “booze cruises” from a very dry and thirsty Prohibition-era USA to help pay her huge running costs. But the cracks grew bigger, the electrical fires got more frequent and the finances grew ever worse. Cunard and White Star line merged in 1934 in a government-sponsored deal. The new company had too many liners and the older ones began to be disposed of; Majestic survived the initial chop, but her card was marked.

With the new company flagship Queen Mary under construction, Cunard-White Star made to dispose of the sister ship Berengaria, which was older and more prone to fires, but the larger Majestic had higher running costs so in 1936 was taken out of service instead.

She quietly sailed her last voyage in February that year and disappeared from the schedules without any announcement on her future. In May she was bought by Thomas Ward of Inverkeithing for £115k (c. £6.6m in 2023), the scrapyard where many a liner and battleship ended its days.

Majestic was taken into dock at Southampton to have her funnels and masts lowered to allow her to sneak beneath the Forth Bridge, but there was a snag – the minor matter of fine legal print of the Treaty of Versailles. Bismarck had been handed over as a prize of war as compensation to White Star, but the terms did not allow the new owner to sell her. Instead, the Royal Navy stepped in and took possession, and “gave” Wards 24 old destroyers of equivalent scrap value in return. Everyone was happy. The lawyers were happy. Cunard-White Star got paid by Wards, Wards got the scrap they had paid for and the Royal Navy got what had been – until 6 months previous – the largest ship in the world, for the price of only a few old rusty relics.

The great liner was now taken in for conversion to an enormous training ship, with capacity for 1500 trainee boys and 500 officer apprentices. Her luxurious fittings – apart from the swimming pool – were stripped out, and the vast interior converted to spartan classrooms. Where once her passengers slept in the most luxurious cabins afloat, the new occupants would sling hammocks from the roof beams in time-honoured Royal Navy tradition. In April 1937 she made her last sea voyage, to Rosyth on the Firth of Forth.

On arrival, she commissioned as HMS Caledonia, named after the Victorian training ship that had once served on the Forth under that name. Her job was to train the boys and young men who would fill the ranks of the expanding Royal Navy in the run up to the inevitable war. By the end of the year there were 1,000 trainees aboard.

The new Caledonia only had an expected lifespan of 4 years, she was to plug the gaps until permanent shore facilities could take over; but she didn’t even make this. On the outbreak of war there was a panic that the Luftwaffe would target her for a revenge sinking. This was not without reason and the first air raids over the United Kingdom during the war soon followed over the Forth with the Royal Navy and Rosyth being the target. And so the trainee boys onboard were packed off to safety in the Isle of Man, the officer apprentices were sent ashore at Rosyth, and the great ship was floated out into the Forth and pumped full of water so she would settle on the sea bed at low tide (therefore couldn’t be “sunk”), to await her fate, or another use.

However the proud old ship had other ideas. Just 26 days after war was declared and a full 17 days before the Luftwaffe arrived over the Forth, she set herself on fire and burnt out, settling on to the bed of the Firth. Her shonky electrical system had the last laugh. With the country now at war with Germany, the niceties of previous treaties could be overlooked, and she was sold to Wards of Inverkeithing – again, for mining as a strategic reserve of scrap iron. She was demolished in situ from 1940-43.

In July 1943, what remained of the hull was patched up and floated around the corner to Inverkeithing, for beaching and final break-up by Wards. This was completed in 1944, her name transferred to a shore station at Oban.

After the war, the name was relocated back to Rosyth, where it was a shore training establishment until 1985. It was rehabilitated again at Rosyth in 1996, where it remains to this day, the Navy’s HQ in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The HMS Caledonia which was once the liner RMS Majestic remains the longest ship to have ever commissioned into the Royal Navy, a full 24ft longer than the modern Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers. With her loss in 1939, the battleship HMS Hood would regain her crown as the largest ship in the Navy. In a sardonic twist of fate, Hood would be sunk in May 1941 by a German ship named Bismarck – with great loss of life.

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Sunny South Queensferry and the Forth Rail Bridge.

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Taken this day, 2025 - Because you're mine, I walk the line...
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Cramond Isle and Causeway at low tide. Every year a numbr of eejits ignore the large warning signs & forget about the tides, getting stuck on the island & having to call for rescue.

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Prom Life
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The sun actually came out for a wee while over #Portobello Promenade on Sunday

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Sunday sailing

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Enjoying some yachting off the coast at #Portobello

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Number Four
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Wooden Groyne on Porty Beach

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Happy doggo taking its humans for a beach walk
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A day of firsts; the thread about the start of the air war over Britain above the Firth of Forth

This thread was originally written and published in July 2023.

On September 3rd 1939, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, drawing the country into what would become the Second World War. This early period of the war is sometimes called the “Phoney War”, on account of the relatively limited military activity between France, Germany and Britain on the Western Front. However on Monday 16th October 1939, the air war over Britain commenced over the Firth of Forth as German bombers made their first air raid on the country of the war and the RAF squadrons defending Edinburgh went immediately to war.

603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron – an auxiliary squadron defending its home city from RAF Turnhouse – claimed the first German aircraft to be shot down by an RAF fighter over British territory in WW2 on that very day. At about 14:45, Red Section under Flt. Lt. “Patsy” Gifford fatally damaged a Ju-88 bomber near Cockenzie. The German aircraft, from squadron KG30, crashed into the Forth 4 miles offshore. The Cockenzie fishing boat Dayspring, skippered by John Dickson, rescued the crew. They admitted that they were reluctant at first to do so, but they were sailors foremost and overcame their misgivings to help those in peril on the sea.

Rear gunner OGefr. Kramer had been killed before the plane crashed and was never found, but pilot OLt. Hans Storp and crewmen Hugo Rohnke and Hans Georg Heilscher were saved and sent to the military hospital at Edinburgh Castle, the first German military prisoners in Britain of WW2. The grateful Storp gave his gold ring to John Dickson in thanks for his life.

Earlier that morning, at 09:30, the “Chain Home” radar station at Drone Hill in Berwick shire had identified two enemy aircraft approaching over the North Sea. At 10:21, Flt. Lt. George Pinkerton of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron became the first RAF fighter pilot to attack a German aircraft over Britain when his Spitfire engaged and damaged a He-111 bomber over the Isle of May. This aircraft – one of two from squadron KG26 – had been on a reconnaissance flight to photograph the naval dockyard at Rosyth and was chased east out to sea where it evaded its pursuers, returning safely home. 602 Squadron had been redeployed eastwards to defend Edinburgh and the Forth and had been based out of RAF Drem in East Lothian for just 3 days.

A confused game of cat and mouse now commenced between the RAF and Luftwaffe all along the East Coast of Scotland for much of the morning and early afternoon as attempts were made to intercept sporadic German incursions. The radar sets failed to work properly and broke down, phantom raiders were reported by the public and the ground controllers got their calculations back to front and sent the defending fighters in the wrong directions.

That afternoon the weather was good – clear skies with only broken cloud. At 14:20, the Royal Observer Corps, trained ground spotters whose job was to identify and report enemy aircraft over land, confirmed the presence of Ju-88 bombers in East Lothian. These were 12 aircraft commanded by Haupt. Helmuth Pohle of squadron KG30 and had been sent on a mission to attack the Royal Navy at Rosyth, based on the reports from the morning reconnaissance flight that George Pinkerton and 602 Squadron had intercepted. Once again, those Spitfires were scrambled to meet the raiders. At 14:27, the anti aircraft battery at Dalmeny reported the bombers flying up the Forth. The attackers had been forbidden to attack the Dockyard itself for fear of civilian casualties, so aimed for the ships anchored in the Firth. While the gunners frantically phoned for permission to open fire, the bombs began to fall.

The first wave of attackers targeted the cruiser HMS Southampton. At 14:35, the 500kg bombs fell around the ship but missed; however two of her boats that had been anchored alongside, including the Admiral’s personal barge, were sunk. At 14:38 – three minutes after the start of the attack – the orders for the defenders to open fire were given and every anti-aircraft gun on land and on ships that could be brought to bare opened up. At the same time, the next wave of attackers, those led by OLt. Hans Storp, arrived. They approached from the south over Threipmuir Reservoir and commenced their bombing run.

By now, both 602 (City of Glasgow) and 603 (City of Edinburgh) squadrons were in the air. Yellow Section of 603 attacked Storp and put his port engine out of action. The plane limped towards East Lothian out to sea, in a futile attempt to escape, which was where Red Section under Patsy Gifford brought it down. The victorious 603 were now ordered to return to Turnhouse to re-arm and re-fuel, leaving the defence in the hands of 602 Squadron. Blue Section, under George Pinkerton, spotted the aircraft of Helmuth Pohle over Inverkeithing and gave chase through the broken cloud. Pinkerton and his wing-man Archie McKellar attacked, killing two of the German machine’s crew and incapacitating both its engines. It headed for the sea near Crail and ditched three miles off of Fife Ness. The time was somewhere between 14:45 and 14:55, the Observer Corps putting the crash at the latter time, but McKellar and Pinkerton are credited with gaining the “first kill” before Patsy Gifford in some chronologies.

The events of October 16th had not yet concluded however. About 25 minutes after Pohle’s machine crashed, another Ju-88 bomber appeared over the outer reaches of the Forth. It had escaped interception up to this point as the ground observers had initially thought it to be a friendly Bristol Blenheim (an easy mistake, as the two were somewhat similar and the Ju-88 was a brand new aircraft and almost totally unseen by British eyes this early in the war). It found the destroyer HMS Mohawk off of the fishing village of Elie & Earlsferry and attacked; dropping its bombs and firing its machine guns at the ship.

By the time it was chased off by one of 602 Squadron’s Spitfires, 13 men including First Lieutenant E. J. Shea had been killed. Her captain, Commander Richard Jolly, was fatally wounded but refused to abandon his post and brought his ship safely back to Rosyth before dying a few hours later. In total 16 men from the Mohawk would lose their lives that day.

The last of the raiders that day appeared in ones and twos across the Lothians around 16:00 and were chased across the Forth, RAF Turnhouse, Edinburgh, Leith and Portobello by the Spitfires of 603 Squadron, but to no avail. Minor injuries were caused across the city from broken glass as bullets fired in the sky came down to earth and painter Joe McLuskie, working on a house in Abercorn Terrace, Portobello, was hit in the stomach and had to undergo emergency surgery in Leith Hospital. The raid had also claimed its first animal victim of the air war over Britain when Lady, a spaniel belonging to Mrs Mercer of Alma Street in Inverkeithing, was struck by shrapnel from falling “friendly” anti-aircraft shells and had to be put down as a result. The noise of the bombs and guns had panicked the animal and it had run off into the street.

Off of Crail, a fishing boat hauled four ditched German airmen from the sea. Crewmen Kurt Seydel and August Schleicher were already dead, Kurt Naake was mortally wounded and would not survive, leaving pilot Helmuth Pohle – nursing a broken jaw – as the sole survivor. He was sent to the naval hospital in Port Edgar. The bodies of Seydel and Schleicher lay in state at St. Phillip’s Church in Portobello, their coffins draped in Swastika flags, and were buried with military honours observed by a respectful turnout of locals at Portobello Cemetery. The proceedings were led by Henry Steel, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and many men from both 602 and 603 Squadrons were in attendance with the pipe band of 603 providing a musical lament. The pair were re-interred in a German military cemetery in England after the war.

Both Patsy Gifford and George Pinkerton would receive the Distinguished Flying Cross award for their efforts that day. Gifford, a reservist who was in peacetime a lawyer and town councillor from Castle Douglas, was sent to command 3 Squadron RAF in November 1939. He was shot down and killed over Belgium in May 1940.

Gifford and Pinkerton both have claims to their “first”. However neither claimed either the first British or first RAF aerial victories of the war. On September 26th 1939, Lt. Cdr. Bruce S. McEwen of 803 Squadron Fleet Air Arm and flying from HMS Ark Royal (therefore a Royal Navy aviator and not in the RAF) shot down a German Do-18 flying boat over the North Sea off Norway, the first British aerial victory of the way. The below photo was taken by the destroyer HMS Somali when they rescued its crew.

Another Do-18 would become the first German aircraft brought down by an RAF aircraft flying from the British mainland, was claimed by a Lockheed Hudson patrol aircraft of 224 Squadron Coastal Command out of RAF Leuchars on 8th October. The Hudson, actually a modified American airliner and intended to be a bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, proved to have a surprising capability as a long range fighter in the early part of the war.

And two weeks after 602 Squadron’s Pinkerton and McKellar brought Helmuth Pohle’s war to a premature end off of Crail, Archie McKellar shot down an He-111 bomber of squadron KG26, flown by Uffz. Kurt Lehmkuhl over East Lothian. This was the first RAF victory that brought down a plane over land, the machine making a crash landing in the Lammermuir hills near Humbie.

Another He-111 was shot down by 602 Squadron out of RAF Drem on February 9th 1940, with Squadron Leader Douglas Farquar bringing it down in a field just outside North Berwick.

This was the first chance for British intelligence to get a close up look of such a machine in a flyable condition and it was therefore partially dismantled and towed away for onwards transport to the Boffins down south. The plane was put back together, repaired, and commissioned into the RAF as part of the “Rafwaffe” of captured machines. Here it is seen going down Dirleton Avenue in North Berwick to the bemusement of onlookers.

Remarkably, there’s a colour cine film of it going down Musselburgh High Street, exciting much local interest, on its way to RAF Turnhouse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwhXwLhWDEc

Hans Storp’s Ju-88 would suffer the misfortune of being the first pilot and aircraft to be shot down twice in the war, when in December 1939 a re-enactment of his last flight took place for the propaganda film “Squadron 992“. An RAF Bristol Blenheim (which the observers had confused with the German Ju-88 back in October) stood in for the German machine on this occasion. The Cockenzie fisherman John Dickson, his crew, and their boat the Dayspring reprised their roles from that day and played themselves for the cameras.

You can watch the film Squadron 992 on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycuXAtLyo4

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.