HMS Indefatigable

HMS Indefatigable is the name of at least three British warships.

HMS Indefatigable (1784) was build as a sixty-four gun two-decked ship of the line, by that time already nearly obsolete for the main battle line. In 1794, she was razed, i.e. the upper gun deck was cut away to convert her into a razé, an overly large and heavily armed frigate of (nominally) 44 guns. During much of her career she was commanded by Sir Edward Pellew. Her probably most famous battle was a fight between the Indefatigable and the Amazon, a second British frigate, against the French Les Droits De l`Homme, a 74 gun ship of the line that ended with the Droits De l`Homme being driven onto shore in a gale, with all but 200 of her crew of 1300 killed. However, the major claim to fame is that Indefatigable was selected by C.S. Forrester as the first ship of his (fictional) hero Horatio Hornblower.

HMS Indefatigable (1911) was a British Dreadnought Battlecruiser. She fought under Capt. C.F. Sowerb in the Battle of Jutland (1916), when a hit (probably from German Battlecruiser Von der Tann) penetrated the armour of her forward turret, leading to an explosion of the magazine and the sinking of the ship. All but four of her crew died.

HMS Indefatigable (1942) was an Illustrious class aircraft carrier. She took part in the hunt for German Battleship Tirpitz, and was later transferred to the Pacific theater, where she was the first British ship to suffer a Kamikaze attack. Due to the armoured flight deck typical for British carriers, she was not seriously damaged. After the end of World War 2, she was paid off, but later recommissend as a training ship. She was finally scraped in 1956.

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by fixing it.