Fearless, the fifth ship of that name to serve in the Royal Navy, was
laid down at
Pembroke Dockyard on 15 November 1911,
launched on 12 June 1912 and completed in October 1913.
Fearless was serving as the leader of the DF as of 18 July 1914 and was transferred, together with her flotilla, to the Harwich Force after the start of the war.
Battle of Heligoland Bight The Battle of Heligoland Bight was a British attack on German forces patrolling the
Heligoland Bight by the two destroyer flotillas of the Harwich Force on 28 August, supported by a
submarine flotilla and the 1st LCS and
battlecruisers from the
Grand Fleet. The Germans were taken by surprise and the leading 3rd DF damaged several
torpedo boats before the light cruiser made an appearance around 08:00;
Fearless hit her once about five minutes later and knocked out one of her guns before the German ship disappeared back into the fog. The Harwich Force turned west at 08:12 to disengage before any further German cruisers made an appearance, but
Fearless spotted the torpedo boat three minutes later and opened fire without visible effect and V-187 was able to briefly disengage before being spotted by two light cruisers from the 1st LCS and several British destroyers that sank her. In the meantime, Tyrwhitt's
flagship, , was badly damaged by and
Fearless rendezvoused with her at 08:55 to cover her withdrawal. Around 10:35, spotted
Arethusa and opened fire, but was driven off by the fire from
Fearless and the combined destroyers of both flotillas. Shortly afterwards, made a brief appearance before disengaging in the face of the massed British ships.
Strassburg, however, reappeared around 11:10 and opened fire on
Arethusa again. The repeated appearances by the German cruisers caused Tyrwhitt to ask for assistance from the ships detached from the Grand Fleet.
Vice-Admiral David Beatty's battlecruisers turned south at 11:35, right after the 1st DF became embroiled with . Without
Fearless in close support, things looked bad for the British destroyers as they had expended many of their torpedoes earlier in the battle, but the 1st LCS came into sight from the north at 11:50 and quickly began hitting the German cruiser. Shortly afterwards,
Mainz was able to turn away into a fogbank, but that put her squarely in the path of
Fearless and the rest of the Harwich Force.
Fearless soon disabled
Mainzs rudder and she began slowly circling. The British ships ceased fire after her last gun ceased firing at 12:25, just as
Cöln and
Strassburg came into sight from the north.
Fearless and three destroyers turned north to engage the cruisers, just as the battlecruisers made an appearance. They drove off those two ships and were later able to sink
Cöln and as they showed through the mists. While this was happening, the Harwich Force resumed its withdrawal with
Fearless taking the crippled destroyer in tow. The first attempt to bomb the
Zeppelin sheds south of
Cuxhaven,
Germany was on 24 October, but had to be cancelled because of bad weather. Another was made on 23 November, but it was cancelled when
intercepted radio signals revealed that a squadron of armoured cruisers was in their path. The third attempt began on 24 December, with
Fearless and eight destroyers from the 1st DF providing close cover for the strike force. The Germans noticed the strike force about 07:30 on the 25th after it had launched its
seaplanes north the island of
Heligoland. In response, the Germans launched their own aircraft and a Zeppelin to find and attack the British ships; another Zeppelin already airborne was diverted to search for them as well. The British were soon located, but the German attacks by two seaplanes and a Zeppelin were ineffective. Another seaplane attacked
Fearless and her half-flotilla without effect and was driven off by the cruiser. After the ships had reached the rendezvous point to pick up the returning aircraft, they were attacked by another Zeppelin, again without effect. About two weeks prior to the Cuxhaven Raid, German radio traffic had alerted the
Admiralty of a German attack on an English port on 15 December. Without knowing the target, the Admiralty realised that it was impossible to intercept the attack, but that it could position forces to get between the High Seas Fleet and its bases. It therefore ordered
Fearless and the Harwich Force to patrol the southern North Sea and to shadow the German ships if they were spotted, but the Germans were too far north to intercept. In the aftermath of the
Battle of Dogger Bank, the Admiralty believed further raids by battlecruisers would be the most likely course of action selected by the Germans, so it reorganised the Grand Fleet to make better to respond to further raids. One part of this was to reinforce Beatty's new Battlecruiser Fleet with
Fearless and her flotilla on 21 February 1915, based at
Rosyth,
Scotland. Less than a month later, she was ordered to sea, together with nine destroyers, on 9 March to command the successful search for the recently spotted submarine . Six months later, two battlecruiser
squadrons, escorted by
Fearless and most of the 1st DF, covered the laying of minefields in the southern North Sea on 10 September.
Battle of Jutland As the Battlecruiser Fleet was cruising south searching for the German battlecruisers on 31 May 1916,
Fearless and her destroyers were screening the
fast battleships of the
5th Battle Squadron (BS) which was trailing the two battlecruiser squadrons. When the British turned north after spotting the main body of the High Seas Fleet, the 1st DF fell in on the unengaged side of the 5th BS so that their
funnel smoke would not obscure the battleships' view of their German opposite numbers. As they got further north, the destroyers pushed forward to screen the battlecruisers while
Fearless was too slow to stay with them and remained on the unengaged side of the 5th BS, and later of the Grand Fleet after the two forces rendezvoused. As night fell, she found herself trailing the
1st Battle Squadron. That squadron's
flagship, , had been torpedoed earlier, but by the middle of the night she was forced to reduce speed and turn for home. Vice-Admiral Cecil Burney, the squadron commander, summoned
Fearless to the flagship to transfer him and his staff to the battleship .
Fearless was then ordered to escort
Marlborough home. The return voyage was rather eventful as the two ships engaged a Zeppelin without effect early on the morning of 1 June and
Marlborough was near-missed by about 10:55. Later that evening the weather worsened and the water was rising faster than it could be pumped out. At 00:47 on 2 June, the battleship warned
Fearless and her escorting destroyers that they should be prepared to come alongside and rescue her crew. This proved unnecessary as the pumps began to draw ahead of the incoming water and the destroyers laid an oil slick to moderate the waves ahead of
Marlborough. She reached the
Humber at 08:00 and
Fearless departed for
South Queensferry later that morning. She was undamaged in the battle and only fired three 4-inch
rounds in the entire battle. The ship arrived at
Belfast,
Northern Ireland, on 19 July to begin a lengthy refit to convert her into a submarine depot ship that lasted until 4 October. Nine days later,
Fearless sailed for
Murmansk,
Russia, and arrived there on the 19th to serve as the depot ship for several
British G-class submarines based there. The ship sailed back to Britain on 15 November, together with all three of her submarines. By January 1917 she was the leader of the
12th Submarine Flotilla of the Grand Fleet, made up of the notoriously accident-prone
K-class steam-powered submarines, that was based at Scapa Flow. From 3–17 March,
Fearless was refitted at
Invergordon. On 17 July, she and her flotilla transferred to Rosyth,
Scotland. She was repaired and survived the war, but was sold for scrap in November 1921. ==Notes==