HMS Sappho (1891)

For other ships of the same name, see HMS Sappho.

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Career (United Kingdom)
Name:	HMS Sappho
Builder:	Samuda Brothers, Cubitt Town, London
Laid down:	1890
Launched:	9 May 1891
Commissioned:	1893
Fate:	Broken Up 1921
General characteristics
Displacement:	3,600 tons
Length:	314 feet (95.7 m)
Beam:	43.5 feet (13.3 m)
Draught:	17.5 feet (5.3 m)
Speed:	19.75 knots
Complement:	273 to 300 (Officers and Men)
Armament:	As built: 2 × QF 6-inch (152.4 mm) guns 6 × QF 4.7 inch (120 mm) guns 8 × 6 pounders 2 to 4 × 14 inch Torpedo Tubes Converted in 1914 to a lightly armed minelayer.

HMS Sappho was an Apollo class cruiser of the British Royal Navy which served from 1892 to 1918 in various colonial posts, including service during the Second Boer War in 1901. During the First World War, Sappho and her sisters saw service off the British Isles as hastily converted minelayers. In May 1918, Sappho was ordered to be scuttled in the mouth of Ostend harbour in Belgium following the failed First Ostend Raid. The Second Ostend Raid operation (of which Sappho was a part) was intended to block the harbour mouth and prevent the transit of German U-boats and other raiding craft from Bruges to the North Sea. Whilst travelling from Dunkirk to Ostend on the day of the attack however, Sappho suffered severe engine damage in a minor boiler explosion and was forced to retire, taking no part in the partial success of the raid. She was not used again during the war, and was scrapped in 1921.