The royal Navy has had five ships with the name Indefatigable. The story of our Inde began in 1864 when a man named John Clint had the idea of providing a home and training in the ways of the sea for destitute and orphan boys from Liverpool. The Conway, another of the old wooden walls of Britain was already in service on the Mersey as a training ship for Merchant Marine Officers, but it catered only for boys drawn from rich families, Clint thought that other youngsters should be offered the chance to become Deck Officers and such. Clint and some friends set up a committee to raise funds to found and support his idea.

He gained a great deal of support and went to the Admiralty and asked them for one of their old vessels as a base. He was offered the Indefatigable. Another old Ship of the Line was also moored off New Ferry/Rock Ferry at this time, the Akbar, she was a reformatory ship, a really hard place where lads as young as 9 and 10 who had committed sins as little as stealing twopenny worth of apples were committed for up to 4 or 5 years to be reformed, and that after spending up to 3 months at hard labour in prison. Later in 1884 a fourth vessel joined what was almost a Squadron of the Line moored here when the Roman Catholic Reformatory Ship, the Clarence was moored off New Ferry beach. When the Indi was built the Royal Navy were beginning to change over from her traditional wooden walls to the new fangled Ironclads, the Indi was one of the last all timber sailing frigates built for the Royal Navy. Her sister ships were Phaeton, Leander and Arethusa, she being the last Royal Navy frigate to go into action entirely under sail.

Built in Devonport she was launched on 27/7/1848 and was fitted out at Plymouth, being a typical Royal Navy warship with black gunports picked out on a white band painted around her hull. Of 2626 tons dwgt., she was 180 feet long, with a 51.5 feet beam and 16.5 feet deck to keel. She had 50 guns and was considered to be a Fourth Rater. Her armament was 28 x 8" x 65cwt. guns on the lower gun deck with 22 x 32pdr x 45cwt. guns on her upper deck and a complement of 500 men. Her first appearance on the Navy List was in February 1850 with a note to the effect that she was attached to the Experimental Squadron. Her first service was off the coast of Portugal before going to serve a term on the Navy's West Indies Station in time serving as Flagship on the North American Station prior to being sent to South African waters. She returned to England in 1857 and went into the Reserve Fleet at Devonport. This was her total sea service, along with the Arethusa she was earmarked to be converted to steam power but in the end the Lords of the Admiralty offered her to Clint as an unconverted Ship of the Line, but, of course, less her armament. . She came to Liverpool in 1864 under sail and in August was moored in the Sloyne off New Ferry where she remained until 5/1/1914.

The cost of conversion from warship to orphange was found to be £5,000, a problem the Liverpool Committee had not really foreseen. However, Mr. James Bibby of the famous Liverpool shipping family donated the necessary funds. The Bibbys were to maintain their contact with the Indi and the T.S. until its final days always acting as Chairman of the Committee and offering financial support for over a century. The conversion saw a classroom, a tailors room and accommodation for the Captain and his wife built on the main deck. The gundeck was converted to hold 200 boys, they slept in hammocks, and the lower deck provided classrooms, stores and a bandroom. The upper deck was used for drill and held the galley and hospital. In 1912 after a survey she was finally declared to be unfit for further service and a replacement was sought from the Admiralty.

The 5th January was the date she was towed to the West Float at Birkenhead where she was sold for scrap on 26/3/1914. She had been in the Mersey for 50 years. Her replacement was a more modern vessel. I'll continue with the rest of the story because the Indi was much more than a ship, it was another of those great ideas that came out of Liverpool, one that meant a great deal to a great many men who went to sea. There are old men about still who talk about these old Training Ships in the pubs around the town in Liverpool and Birkenhead: Geoff Dudley served for a time on the Conway. The idea is more important somehow than the ship, and Grandad served his apprenticeship on the Indi. What follows is the story of his first berth.

 

Curiously, the next ship the school was offered had been named H.M.S. Phaeton in her Royal Navy days, the same as the Indi's sister ship 1848. This vessel was launched on 27/2/1883 at Govan and was commissioned at Chatham for service in the Mediterranean taking her station there between 1890 and 1892. After several years in home waters she was sent to the Pacific Station between 1898 and 1902, then back to U.K. to serve as a depot ship for a Torpedo Destroyer Squadron until 1909 when she was returned to Devonport and laid up. Of 3,600 tons burthen, she was barquetine rigged with two funnels and carried 10 x 6" and 3 X 3" guns, also 10 Nordenfelds, a fast firing small bore gun and 4 torpedo tubes, her deck was steel but she had little armour since with a top speed of 18 knots she was considered too fast to be hurt by anything any other country had at that time.

She was one of the last Royal Navy vessels to be fitted with both sails and engines. The Lords of the Admiralty were a shower of miserable, tightfisted, old, bar stewards at this time. They demanded £15,000 for the stripped out hull, exactly what she had cost them in the same condition 30 years before in 1883. Again a Bibby, this time Mr. Frank Bibby, gave the money and also paid for the refitting as a T. S. Refitted at Birkenhead and renamed Indefatigable she took up her mooring off New Ferry on 15/1/14 and was the first all steel T.S. At this time the Indi had a little sister ship, the James. J. Bibby, she was used to take the boys out to sea for training, going as far away as Spain and Portugal. She was requisitioned by the Admiralty when the First World War began and fought as a 'Q' ship against German submarines in the North Atlantic. The end for the ships came in 1941 when due to the bombing both the Conway and the Indi were ordered to be evacuated. The committee decided that the time had come to move the T. S. to a shore base, it moved for a time to a temporary base in North Wales before moving to Plas Llanfair, Angelsey in 1944, it remained there until the school finally closed down in 1995. The ship herself though was to not to die yet, she had been sold to a Preston firm to be broken up for scrap, howeevr, before too much damage had been done, the Admiralty took her back, this time to serve as an accommodation hulk at Gourock not far from where she had been built, she had been renamed Carrick II. The end finally came in 1946 when the L. o. A. again sold her, back to the firm that had bought her in 1941, who towed her to Prestonwhere she arrived on 24/1/1947 to be broken up