HMS Caroline

It was a three day visit to the capital of Northern Ireland that led me to visit HMS Caroline on the last day. My family and I had already explored the Titanic museum, sampled the local cuisine and looked at the historic buildings that gave this area its fame for shipbuilding. So the last thing on my list was the Caroline.

She was a very old ship, one of the first cruisers to be made of iron like a mini-battleship, her hull resembling the Dreadnought’s that installed fear into every navy – except that of Germany who had already started a race to build a rival navy that eventually clashed during the May 1916 Battle of Jutland, a devastating example of close combat between large ships that Caroline was involved with, indeed she is the last Jutland survivor today and for that reason alone she is worth preserving.

Painted in the old style battleship grey colours, Caroline is in dry dock but still afloat, a permanent museum yet one that could be moved if recent plans to re-locate are later successful. Her guns have been silent for years but the ship itself was only decommissioned recently, her role as Royal Naval Reserve base having her being very much part of the navy for almost a century.

On board a Jutland exhibition shows the visitor just how terrifying it must have been stuck in a floating tin box, not knowing if the next shell would be the one that sinks you – as several major battleships that day found out the hard way. Moving on there are mock living quarters and areas where they have been made up to show the visitor what life was like for the sailor as the ship was going about her normal patrols, obviously it would be very different at action stations or heading into battle.

The upper deck is made of wood, her mast towering above the bridge where you can climb up to see the steering and flag lockers, where the officer of the watch would stand and guide the ship into port after a long stint at sea, the main guns pointing forward looking as fresh today as they were when she was commissioned.

When we came on board it was early on a Sunday so there were not many people about, the site itself is a bit out of the way but only a short walk from the Titanic Museum and it is signposted at regular intervals. Caroline is well worth a visit, the nearby ticket office also doubles up to tell a brief history of the ship before you go on board so you get a feel for what you are about to visit. The days of this ship serving the Royal Navy are now long gone, but she certainly serves to tell of a part of history that we should never forget.

Richard M. Jones

Richard M. Jones is an author and historian specialising in disasters and shipwrecks along with two World Wars. Spending his time between Hampshire and Yorkshire, he has put up 12 memorials to victims of forgotten tragedies and published 19 books along the way.