Harbour Service and Training Hulk
The Phaeton did harbour service at Devonport from 1904 to 1913, where she was used for training stokers and seamen. Her officers were borne on the books of HMS Vivid.
In 1913 her "stripped out hull" was sold for £15,000 to a charitable institution that ran a training ship for boys based at Liverpool. The charity was founded in 1864 by John Clint, a Liverpool shipowner, with the aim of training the sons of sailors, destitute and orphaned boys to become merchant seamen. The charity's first training ship was the former HMS Indefatigable, an old wooden frigate which served the charity as TS Indefatigable from 1864 to 1914. Mr Frank Bibby, gave the charity money to buy the Phaeton and to refit her at Birkenhead as a training ship. The Phaeton was renamed TS Indefatigable and moored off New Ferry in Liverpool on 15 January 1914. The previous Indefatigable had been condemned by the Inspector of Training Ships in 1912 as unfit, and was towed to the West Float at Birkenhead on 5 January 1914, and sold for scrap on 26 March. The figurehead of William IV from the old Indefatigable was transferred to the ex-Phaeton. An Admiralty warrant for a Blue Ensign defaced with a liver bird for TS Indefatigable was issued on 31 December 1927.
"Life on board was tough. Breakfast consisted of one slice of bread and margarine washed down with 'cocoa flush' which had been prepared in the galley by dropping solid slabs of cocoa, unsweetened, in a cauldron of boiling water. The liquid was drawn off into kettles which were lowered to the mess decks where the boys drank it from basins. Cups were never seen on board! Dinner consisted of varieties of 'buzz'. There was pea buzz, Irish buzz and mystery buzz. Buzzes were neither soups nor stews but had the characteristics of both and were served in the same basins as the cocoa flush. A small pile of broken ship's biscuits was placed beside each plate. Boiled cod was the 'treat' on Fridays!"
The Phaeton served as TS Indefatigable until 1941, when due to German bombing of English towns, both the TS Indefatigable and the TS Conway were ordered to be evacuated. The charity committee decided that the time had come to move the training ship to a shore base, it moved for a time to a temporary base in North Wales. The Indefatigable (ex-Phaeton) was then sold to a Preston firm for scrap.
However, she was repurchased by the Admiralty in 1941 and renamed Carrick II, and served as an accommodation hulk at Gourock throughout World War II.
In 1946 she was sold for breaking up to Wards in Preston, where she arrived on 24 January 1947.
Read more about this topic: HMS Phaeton (1883)
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