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HMS Invincible

HMS Invincible by Charles E. Hill

HMS Invincible

Seven Royal Navy ships have been named Invincible.

HMS Invincible 01: The first Invincible was captured off Cape Finisterre from the French 1747 and bore the name L’Invincible! She had 74 guns and was the first ‘purpose’ built ship of that size to serve as a third rate of the Royal Navy. Her capture was of immense help to naval architects and when the Battle of Trafalgar took place the larger percentage of ships of the line were of this design.

Invincible sank in early 1758 after hitting a sandbank in The Solent.

HMS Invincible 02: The second ship to bear the name Invincible was launched at Deptford in 1765 and commissioned at Portsmouth in 1776. A 74 gun third rate ship she was built during a period of relative peace to replace ships that were retired after the Seven Years War, 1756 to 1763.

Invincible served in the American War of Independence seeing action at the battles of Cape St Vincent (1780), Chesapeake (1781) and St. Kitts (1782). She was badly damaged at the Glorious 1st of June Battle which took place off the north coast of France in 1794.

She was eventually wrecked off the coast of Norfolk in 1801 with the loss of nearly 400 lives.

HMS Invincible 03: The third Invincible was again a 74 gun third rate ship. She was launched at Woolwich in 1808 and saw action in the Peninsular Wars where she was deployed in support of British forces.

‘Paid off’ in 1814 she eventually became a coal hulk in 1857 where four years later she was broken up.

HMS Invincible 04: Completed in 1870 the fourth Invincible was an Audacious Class ironclad battleship armed with ten 9 inch and four 6 inch guns. Built at the Napier shipyard on The Clyde she could be powered by steam and sail.

Invincible was deployed to the Mediterranean for most of her naval service seeing action in the Egyptian War of 1882. After a deployment to China in 1886 she returned to Southampton where she undertook guardship duties. With her engines being removed in 1901 she assumed the role of Depot Ship for a Destroyer Flotilla in Sheerness.

In 1904 was renamed HMS Erebus which she was known as until 1906 when she was again re-roled, but this time as a training ship for engineering artificers in Portsmouth, under the new name of Fisguard II.

On 17 February 1914, whilst under tow during a storm, Invincible sank not far from Portland Bill with the loss of 21 members of her crew.

HMS Invincible 05: The fifth Invincible was a battlecruiser built by Armstrong Whitworth on Tyneside in 1907. Although launched in April 1907 an accident with another ship prevented her from being taken from Tyneside on 18 March 1909 to Portsmouth for commissioning.

During WWI she took part in the Battle of Heligoland Bight in August 1914 before being sent with HMS Inflexible to the Falkland Islands where both ships engaged and sank the German ships Scharnhorst and Gneisnau.

Invincible was the flagship of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916 and after coming under heavy enemy fire from the Lutzow a shell hit ‘Q’ turret. The explosive force ignited the magazine below which in turn caused Invincible to blow up and sink within seconds of being hit. Over 1,000 officers and men lost their lives in this action with only 6 members of crew surviving.

HMS Invincible 06: The current HMS Invincible was launched by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on 3rd May 1977. She was the first of the new Invincible Class of Anti-Submarine Warfare Carriers to be taken into service.

Invincible was deployed to the Falkland Islands in 1982 to provide air cover to the troops tasked with re-taking the islands after the Argentinean invasion for which she was awarded the Battle Honour ‘Falkland Islands’. She was subsequently sent on operations to the Adriatic and Bosnia and more recently, in 1998/99 her Sea Harriers enforced the No-Fly Zone in southern Iraq.

HMS Invincible was decommissioned in August 2005 and is currently classed as ‘inactive until 2010’, however, it is said that should the need arise Invincible could be deployed and that as such is still an active aircraft carrier.

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