HMS President - Victoria Embankment (London)
N 51° 30.640 W 000° 06.507
30U E 700644 N 5710579
HMS President, originally Flower-class anti-submarine Q-ship HMS Saxifrage, is now moored permanently on the Thames at Victoria Embankment in London.
Waymark Code: WMQCRJ
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/06/2016
Published By:
C4A
Views: 4
HMS President, originally Flower-class anti-submarine Q-ship HMS Saxifrage, is now moored permanently on the Thames at Victoria Embankment in London.
HMS Saxifrage was renamed HMS President in 1922 and moored permanently on the Thames as a Royal Navy Reserve drill ship. In 1982 she was sold to private owners, and having changed hands twice, now serves as a venue for conferences and functions, and serves as the offices for a number of media companies. Technically, she is now called HMS President (1918) to distinguish her from HMS President, the Royal Naval Reserve base in St Katharine Docks. She is one of the last three surviving Royal Navy warships of the First World War. She is also the sole representative of the first type of purpose-built anti-submarine vessels, and is the ancestor of WWII convoy escort sloops, which evolved into modern anti-submarine frigates.
The original Flower-class sloops (the Acacia, Azalea and Arabis classes) were all built in 1915 as fleet minesweeping vessels, with triple hulls at the bow to give extra protection against loss from mine damage. When submarine attacks on British merchant ships became a serious menace after 1916, the existing Flowers were transferred to convoy escort duty, and fitted with depth charges as well as 4.7-inch naval guns. Saxifrage was built at the shipyard of Lobnitz & Company, Renfrew, Scotland, as yard number 827 and launched on 29 January 1918. She was named Saxifrage after the flower also known as London Pride.
MS Saxifrage escorted convoys in UK waters during 1918, and engaged nine U-boats, as recorded in her logbooks held in the National Archives at Kew. In 1922 she was permanently moored on the Thames, and renamed President. Other members of the class served as patrol vessels throughout the world during the peacetime years between the wars, but almost all were disposed of by the Second World War. This allowed the majority of the class names to be revived for the new, smaller Flower-class corvettes, including both Saxifrage and Chrysanthemum.
HMS President was painted by Tobias Rehberger in 2014 to commemorate the use of dazzle camouflage in World War I. Although a design this elaborate would not have been used in practice, it still requires more than a casual glance to work out which end of the ship is which. [wiki]