Built as a tanker under yard No 174 by the Blyth Shipbuilding Company, on the stock bought for £81,000 by the Royal Navy.
Converted to an aircraft carrier, the first Royal Navy ship to be completed as an aircraft carrier.
07 November 1913 keel laid down.
05 September 1914 launched as the HMS ARK ROYAL, the second under that name in the Royal Navy.
Displacement 7.190 ton standard, 7.570 ton full loaded. Dim. 112 x 15.5 x 5.5m. (draught).
Powered by 1 triple expansion steam engine, 3,000 ihp., one shaft, speed 11 knots.
Armament 4 – 12pdr., 2 – 76mm Maxim MG.
Carried 5 floatplanes and 2 landplanes.
Crew 180.
10 December 1914 completed.
Extensive changes to the design were made in converting the ship to a seaplane tender, with propulsion machinery moved aft and a working deck occupying the forward half of the ship. The deck was not originally intended as a flying-off deck, but for starting and running up of seaplane engines and for recovering damaged aircraft from the sea[3]. The ship was equipped with a large aircraft hold, 150 ft (46 m) long, 45 ft (14 m) wide and 15 ft (4.6 m) high along with workshops. Two 3-ton steam cranes would lift the aircraft through the sliding hatch onto the flight deck or into the water.
She could carry five floatplanes and two regular, wheeled aircraft. The latter would have to return to land after launch, but the seaplanes could take off over the bow and land in the water alongside the carrier, before being lifted back onboard by the cranes. Her original complement of aircraft were two Sopwith Type 807 seaplanes, two Wright Pushers, a Short 135 and two Sopwith Tabloid land-based aircraft.
"Her truly unique feature was the steadying sail on the mizzen to help keep her head to the wind; she remains the only aircraft carrier to have been fitted with a sail."[4]
ARK ROYAL sailed for the Dardanelles on 1 February 1915 and provided support to Allied landings there until May 1915, serving in the Eastern Mediterranean until the Armistice. In January 1918, two of her Sopwith Baby aircraft attempted to bomb the German battlecruiser SMS GOEBEN.
After the war she operated in the Black Sea, transporting aircraft to Batumi to support White Russian forces fighting the Russian Civil War. She was also used in support of the air and land campaign in Somalia against the Mad Mullah. In 1920, she assisted the withdrawal of White Russian forces from Crimea. She then returned to Britain and was put into reserve at Rosyth for a refit.
She was recommissioned in September 1922 to take aircraft out to the Mediterranean during the Chanak crisis, before undergoing another refit at Malta in April 1923. In December 1934, she was renamed HMS PEGASUS to free her name for a new carrier that was then beginning construction.
PEGASUS was converted to a Fighter catapult ship in 1940, but served in only minor roles during the Second World War, and was sold in December 1946 to R.E. Ellerman. Work began to convert her into a merchant ship named ANITA I , but this was halted and she was broken up for scrap at Grays, Essex during October 1950, where she had arrived on 15 April 1950.
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Source: mostly downloaded from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ark_Royal_(1914) HTTP://WWW.MIRAMARSHIPINDEX.ORG.NZ