Final Great War Q-ship heads to the Breakers

The 1,200-ton HMS Saxifrage is the last of 112 Flower-class corvettes constructed during WWI, the last of 366 Q-Ship “Special Service Vessels” from the same conflict, and only one of three remaining British warships from the era. IWM SP 1650 After the war, she then spent a full six decades, from 1922 to 1988, as a floating Royal Naval Reserve drill ship, HMS President, including training gun crews during WWII. Britain’s sea soldiers in training. Men of the Maritime Royal Artillery are now being given elementary training in seamanship at HMS PRESIDENT, the DEMS base on the Thames. Here several men are being initiated into the mysteries of “Bends and Hitches” (knots) by Leading Seaman W J Bateman, Enfield, Middlesex. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205149660 As such, she was the last Royal Navy warship to wear Victorian battleship livery of black hull, white superstructure and buff yellow funnel and masts. In 2014, as part of the First…