TS Indefatigable
Training Ship Indefatigable was a British training school opened in 1865 for boys intending to join the Royal Navy or the British Merchant Navy. Origins Until the middle of the nineteenth century the British Merchant Navy had no recognized training schools for boys entering the service. Education consisted of boys about 15 years old going to sea "to be led, guided, bullied and socialized into the culture of the sea". There was no distinction between training for AB, and the training of future masters. Through experience it was possible to rise to the position of Master without any formal training. Beginning in the mid- nineteenth century various forms of navigational and seamanship schools were created to remedy the problem Liverpool Two schools were established in Liverpool, HMS Conway, to prepare boys to go to sea as apprentice officers, and the TS Indefatigable to prepare boys for life at sea as a member of the deck crew. In 1863 captain John Clint, a Liverpool shipowner, proposed the idea that a sea training school should be established for the orphans and sons of Liverpool seamen. Clint had helped found the Liverpool Shipowners' Association in 1839, the Pilots' Commission, the Dock and Harbour Company, the Liverpool Sailors' Home, the Northern Hospital, but most importantly Clint had been the prime mover in establishing HMS Conway and the Akbar, a reformatory school for boys. In 1864 the Admiralty agreed to loan HMS Indefatigable, a fifty–gun sailing ship frigate launched in 1848 and retired from active service in 1857, to the Indefatigable committee. Mr. James Bibby contributed £5,000 to convert HMS Indefatigable into a training ship, and this became the beginning of a long relationship between the Bibby family and TS Indefatigable, which continues today with Sir Michael Bibby as President of the Indefatigable Old Boys Association. The Indefatigable was moored at the Sloyne, off Rock Ferry on the River Mersey, alongside HMS Conway and two reformatory ships Akbar and Clarence. The first boys to join the Indefatigable did so on 28 August 1865, with 35 being admitted in the first year. By 1868, 148 boys were on board. Replacement ship In 1912 the Inspector of Training Ships condemned the Indefatigable as unfit for use, and so in 1913 the Admiralty agreed to sell HMS Phaeton to the Indefatigable committee for £15,000. Mr. Frank Bibby gave the committee the money to buy the Phaeton and re-fit her as a training ship. The original Indefatigable remained off Rock Ferry until 5 January 1914, and was then towed to the West Float at Birkenhead and sold for scrap on 26 March. By then, the Phaeton had been renamed the Indefatigable and moored off Rock Ferry on 15 January 1914, at which time the old Indefatigable'''s figurehead of William IV was transferred to the new ship. World War II The replacement Indefatigable remained on the Mersey until 1941, when it was decided that the intense German bombing of Liverpool during World War II made it too dangerous to remain