LAST OF THREE DECKERS

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 75, 21 December 1921, Page 5

LAST OF THREE DECKERS

OLD IMPREGNABLE TO BE BROKEN UP. H.M.S. Impregnable. which was launched in 1860, the last and largest of the old wooden three-deckers, has been sold to the ship-breakers. For 60 years she bore the picturesque name of the Impregnable: but a year ago she became officially known os the Bulwark, because an unsentimental Admiralty had transferred tire original designation to a more modern warship. Tens of thousands of seamen have undergone their preliminary naval training as boys within 'her “wooden walls” as she lay nt Devonport; but. few' of them, much less the public, know that she hns only made two trips in the whole of her history. Even on those two trips she merelv huggod the coast in charge of tugs. The first of them was after 'her launching nt Pembroke Dock, when she was towed io Devonport; ihe second she has just completed round the south coast and up the Thames to ho broken up. Never has she had her sails spread to the full, or fired a shot in anger. Yet when her keel was laid at 1 embi-oko in 1856 she was intended to be tno greatest and stoutest of the whole range of “wooden walls” that defended Britain’s shore in those days But she lapsed into a “show ship,” and old naval wags recall with a chuckle how some European disputes of the day wore immediatelv settled at sight of her by visiting representatives from the countries dancer nod. Her majestic proponions in {hemselves were sufficient in those days thev sav, to give the quietus to unduly argumentative and quarre.somo neighbours.