The story of HMS Caroline
HMS Caroline was laid down by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead on 28 January 1914, launched on 29 September that year and commissioned on 4 December 1914, just months into the First World War. She was the lead ship of the Caroline sub-class of C-class light cruisers, fast and lightly armoured, built for scouting ahead of the fleet.
She joined the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow and, in early 1916, the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron. On 31 May 1916 she fought at the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war. Despite being in the thick of the action, Caroline was never hit and not one of her crew was killed or wounded.
After the war she escaped the scrapyard by becoming a static drill ship for the Royal Naval Reserve, based at Alexandra Dock in Belfast. She held that role for the rest of her career, with a wartime spell as an operational headquarters helping manage transatlantic convoys during the Second World War, and was finally decommissioned in 2011 after nearly a century in service.
In June 2016, on the centenary of Jutland, Caroline opened to the public as a museum ship under the National Museum of the Royal Navy. She is the last surviving British First World War light cruiser and the only ship still afloat that fought at Jutland, restored where she has long been moored beside the Titanic slipways.