Previous ships called Albion
The name Albion has been numerous in the history of Earths "Royal Navy", the navy for the old Earth state of the United Kingdom, in the states various forms. Known vessels to bear the name Albion are listed here.
The motto for Royal Navy vessels named Albion is "Boldly Faithfully Happily"
HMS Albion (1763)
The original Albion, built in 1763, was a 74 gun "third rate" ship of the line. The nameship of her class, her design was an adaption of the design used for the 90-gun "second rate" Neptune which had been built 44 years earlier, and measured 168 feet in length.
Her tour of duty was quiet at first, with the ships first battle being at Grenada against the French in the American War of Independence in July 1779.
Albion's next action was a year later on the 15th May when the British and French Fleets met once again off Martinique. Albion, leading the vanguard of the British Fleet was involved, obviously, in the heaviest of the engagements between the Fleets, suffering heavy casualties, but with little to show for it. Just four days later the two Fleets clashed once again, but for the third time it was indecisive with Albion heavily engaged as before, suffering numerous casualties in the process. In 1794 Albion was consigned to the role of a 60-gun floating battery moored on the Thames Estuary, but in April 1797 while heading to a new position in the Swin Channel, ran aground and two days later, during salvage efforts, broke her back and was completely wrecked.
HMS Albion (17??)
The second Albion was a ship-rigged sloop of just 336 tons, and was an ex-merchant vessel bought by the Royal Navy, though she was privately owned in her previous role as a hired armed ship, she was manned by a Royal Navy crew. She had a powerful armament of 22 carronades, and was a competent convoy escort, but was eventually sold in 1803.
HMS Albion (1802)
The third HMS Albion was a third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was launched at Perry's Yard at Blackwall on the Thames in June 1802. She displaced 1,729 tons and had a large crew of 590 men.
In May 1803 she joined Admiral Cornwallis' Fleet, which was blockading the vital French naval port of Brest, but was soon detached from the Fleet to deploy to the Indian Ocean where she was to remain for quite a few years. In 1814 the year that Napoleon was finally toppled, after a long period under extensive repair, once completed, she became flagship of Rear Admiral George Cockburn taking part in a war (war of 1812) against the United States a duty that the first Albion had once undertook. In the summer of 1814, she was involved in the force that harried the coastline of Chesapeake Bay, where she operated all the way up to the Potomac and Patuxent Rivers, destroying large amounts of American shipping, as well as US government property. The operations ended once peace was declared in 1815. Just a year later, Albion was part of a combined Anglo-Dutch Fleet taking part in that Fleet's bombardment of Algiers, then in 1827 was again part of a combined fleet this time a Anglo-French-Russian Fleet under the command of Admiral Codrington at the Battle of Navarino where a Turkish-Egyptian Fleet was obliterated securing Greek independence. She was hulked as a lazaretto or quarantine ship in 1831 and was finally broken up in 1836.
HMS Albion (1803)
HMS Albion (1808)
Both the fourth and fifth Albions were in service, while the third was still in commission. They were both cutters, being hired between 1803 and 1808, with the second from 1808 to 1812. They were quite tiny with a displacement of 80 tons and armed with six 4-pounder guns, with a small complement of 25 sailors.
HMS Albion (1842)
The sixth HMS Albion was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was the name ship of a class of three second-rates â�?��?? the others being Aboukir and Exmouth. She was ordered in 1839, launched at Plymouth in September 1842, and was 204 feet long, with a displacement of 3,083 tons and quite a large crew complement of 830.
Her first action was in the Crimean War during the siege of Sevastopol on 17 October 1854. While Albion's commanding officer, Captain Stephen Lushington was commanding a Naval Brigade providing vital heavy artillery support for the Allied forces besieging Sevastopol, Albion under the command of Commander Henry Rogers joined over 50 British and French warships of various types into action. The Russians suffered heavy casualties but the Allies had failed to seriously damaged the batteries. Though the Anglo-French Fleet had received in comparison, lighter casualties, with about 500 killed or wounded in total. The Allies though had been battered by the Russian batteries, indeed Albion had been set on fire three times during the engagement, and without the assistance of the courageous tugs, would surely have succumbed to her damage and ran aground. In 1861 she was converted to a steam screw propulsion at Devonport but the modifications were never finished. She was kept in reserve in Devonport for more than twenty years, before the decision was made to scrap her, with her finally being broken up at Devonport in 1884.
HMS Albion (1898)
HMS Albion was a Canopus-class pre-Dreadnought battleship of approximately 14,000 tonnes, with a main armament of 4 x 12 inch (305 mm) guns and was built by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Co. Ltd, launched in 1898 and commissioned in 1901, serving on the China Station until 1905. She spent the next few years in home waters, until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, when she proceeded to join the Cape and East Africa Station. In 1915 she, along with others of the obsolete Canopus-class were in the Mediterranean, bombarding strategic Turkish positions in the Dardanelles. While doing so, two of her sister ships, HMS Goliath and HMS Ocean were sunk in the engagements, and Albion herself was badly damaged while supporting the Gallipoli landings.
On 24 May 1915 Albion became beached on a sandbank off Gaba Tepe and while stranded was struck over a hundred times by Turkish artillery. Fortunately the Turkish guns lacked penetration and Albion suffered fewer than a dozen casualties. She was only towed free after efforts were made to reduce weight and also by using the recoil of firing her main guns simultaneously.
Albion returned home after these damaging engagements in 1916 and was scrapped three years later.
HMS Albion R07 (1947)
The eighth HMS Albion (R07) was a 22,000 ton Centaur-class light fleet carrier of the Royal Navy. She was built on the Tyne by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson. Her keel was laid down in 1944, she was launched in May 1947, but she was not fully completed until May 1954, and after an initial work up with her air group, joined the Mediterranean Fleet in September that same year, becoming flagship of Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers. Two years later, after refitting at Portsmouth, returned once again to the Mediterranean for operations relating to the Suez Crisis where her air group struck key Egyptian airfields, and covered the paratroopers landings.
In July 1958 Albion had a sample of what she would one day become, when she embarked 42 Commando, Royal Marines, with all its vehicles and additional equipment to the Middle East.
The next two years saw her visit the Far East, Australia, New Zealand and the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, before she returned to Portsmouth to pay off. In January 1961 conversion begun for her to become a commando carrier. She re-commissioned in 1962, training with two helicopter squadrons as well as 40 Commando, Royal Marines before she joined the Far East Fleet. She was a vital asset in supporting operations ashore in Borneo during the Indonesian Confrontation. In 1967 she was part of the RN task force that covered the withdrawal from Aden, and in 1971 was part of another withdrawal of British forces, this time in Singapore and the disbandment of the Far East Fleet.
In 1973 she was sold for conversion to a heavy lift vessel for North Sea oil exploration, but the plan collapsed, and she was broken up for scrap at Faslane Naval Base.
HMS Albion L14 (2001)
Click for photo The ninth Albion entered service in 2001. One of 2 Albion Class "Landing Platform Dock Ship", she was commissioned on the 19th June 2003 and added to the amphibious ability of the "Royal Navy".
This amphibious ability came in useful when the vessel was deployed to aide the evacuation of British citizens from the African state of "Cote d'Ivoire" (previously "Ivory Coast") in 2004.
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