HMS Good Hope (1901)

HMS "Good Hope" was a 14,100-ton "Drake"-class armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy; she was originally planned to be named "Africa", but was renamed before she was launched. Laid down on 11 September 1899 and launched on 21 February 1901, with her heaviest gun being of 9.2 inch (234mm) calibre, she became the flagship of the 1st Cruiser Squadron, Atlantic Fleet, in 1906, and in 1908 became the flagship of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron.

ervice

She went into the Reserve Fleet in 1913, but following the mobilisation just before the outbreak of the First World War, she joined the 6th Cruiser Squadron. The 6th Cruiser Squadron was initially allocated to the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow to replace the 4th Cruiser Squadron (of Monmouth class cruisers) which had previously been sent to Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock's North America and West Indies command to help protect British interests during the Mexican Revolution.

However, the Admiralty almost immediately (mistakenly) concluded that it was likely that German liners in New York and other ports on the United States Atlantic seaboard could convert themselves to armed merchant cruisers by installing guns which the Admiralty believed they carried in their holds. They therefore diverted "Good Hope" to further reinforce Craddock's force, and she left Portsmouth on 2 August 1914 under the command of Captain Philip Francklin. Craddock transferred his flag to her on her arrival at Halifax, Nova Scotia because, although 90% of her crew were reservists who had been given little opportunity to train together in the ship, she was faster than his current flagship HMS "Suffolk".

For the next few weeks she was employed protecting British merchant shipping as far south as Pernambuco and later the Falkland Islands. She then embarked on the search for the German East Asiatic Squadron, leaving Stanley on 22 October for the west coast of South America via Cape Horn.

She was sunk along with HMS "Monmouth" by the German armoured cruisers "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau under Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee with the loss of her entire complement of 900 hands in the Battle of Coronel, on 1 November 1914, off the Chilean coast.

References

*cite book | author=Geoffrey Bennet | title=Coronel and the Falklands | publisher = Birlinn Limited| year=2000 | id=ISBN 1-84158-045-7
*cite book | author=| title=Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I | publisher = Studio Editions| year=1990 | id=ISBN 1-85170-378-0
* [http://www.coronel.org.uk/goodhope.php The Coronel Memorial]