Several European and one Canadian 19th and early 20th century warships had long

careers as civilian ships after their military service ended. Many gunboats and coast guard
type ships built in the 1870 to 1914 era were built like commercial ships with slightly
thicker plating and some additional framing. The extent of shipbuilding required for
World War I meant that shipbuilders that did not regularly build major warship types ,
were assigned to build types that could use the full capacity of the yards without
upgrading equipment in them and skills of workers to a great extent so many patrol type
ships were built to commercial type designs.

HMS Warrior:

The first oceangoing fully armor plated warship of the United Kingdom was the HMS
Warrior. It was completed in 1860. It was declared obsolete in 1883. The Royal Navy
usually retained old warships for a few more decades as moored training ships, barracks
ships, prison ships, floating offices, workshops, or barges. The Warrior was one of these
between 1883 and 1924. It was offered for sale for scrap in 1924 but was later
withdrawn in 1929 when an official found it suitable to be a refueling barge for the
rapidly converting to all oil using navy. This allowed the ship to be restored to become a
museum ship in 1979. It is now moored near HMS Victory in Portsmouth. The first
Royal Navy ironclad is the last remaining one.

HMS Humber:

The WW I monitor ship HMS Humber of the UK Royal Navy was built in a UK shipyard
between 1911 and 1913 as a river warship for Brazil as part of a three ship class. Brazil
could not afford the ships once they were completed. The Royal Navy purchased them.
The other two ships of the class were sold for scrap after WW I ended, but the shallow
draft hull of the Humber was bought by a Dutch salvage firm for conversion into a crane
ship. It was destroyed in the Netherlands during WW II.

HMS Handy:

A UK defense contractor built a self propelled barge like ship for testing naval gun
barrels in 1883. The Royal Navy bought it from the contractor a few months after it
entered service. Although built as a test ship, the ship was used to bombard German
occupied Belgium in WW I .The ship was sold to the Dover Harbor Board in 1922 and
was converted into a crane ship. It was used as a crane ship until it was sold for scrap in
1972. The low freeboard, large amount of deck space, and shallow draft made the old hull
desirable for reuse in 1922.
UK Royal Navy Flower Class ships of WW I :

The Royal Navy had several batches of Flower class ships built during and just after WW
I for anti -submarine warfare and some for minesweeping. These ships were built using
merchant ship construction standards, equipment and designs. At least 9 were converted
to merchant ships after the end of WW I. 2 were converted into workboats for port
agencies in Burma and India.

From the website www. Clydebuiltships.co.uk

HMS Peony was built in 1915 and was converted into a passenger ferry in 1919.
It was sold to Greek owners in the early 1930’s and sunk while being used by the navy of
Nazi Germany in 1943

HMS Polyanthus was built in 1917. It was converted to a merchant ship in 1921. It was
owned by a Mexican firm, Canadian firm , British firm and in 1933 sold to a Greek firm.
It was sunk in a German air raid on the port of Pireaus, Greece in 1941.

Gunboat HMS Petaluma of Australia:

The gunboat HMAS Petaluma was built in the United Kingdom for use in
Australia. It served the Royal Australian Navy and predecessor organizations
until 1916. In 1916 it was transferred to the Victorian Harbor Board and
renamed Rip. It served as a general purpose workboat for the board until
1949. The steam engine had never been replaced with diesels. The ship was
replaced by the former Australian Navy WW II minesweeper Whyalla, which was
acquired and converted to a workboat by the Board. The former Whyalla, also
renamed Rip, served until 1984 when it became a museum ship.

Canada of the Canadian Fisheries Protection Service:

The ship Canada was an oceangoing gunboat / Coast Guard Cutter type ship
built for the Canadian Fisheries Protection Service in 1904. Ship was built
in the United Kingdom. When WW I began the ship was made a part of the Royal
Canadian Navy. The navy sold the ship in 1924 to a buyer who converted it
into an inter island cruise ship named Queen of Nassau. The ship was en
route to Tampa in 1926, for a final inspection by a potential new owner, when
it sank in waters now part of the Florida Keys National Maritime Sanctuary.
The cause of the sinking was a leak in the hull.
French Navy cruiser Dupuy De Lome

The navy of France commissioned the cruiser Dupuy De Lome in 1891. The ship
was being prepared for transfer to the navy of Peru when WW I began. The
government of Peru allowed the French Navy to keep the ship for the duration
of the war and did not want it after the war ended. The ship was sold to the
Belgian shipping firm LRB in 1922 and converted to a freighter. The ship had
repeated engine problems and never completed its first voyage as a freighter.
It was sold to a ship breaking firm in 1923

Uncompleted Italian Navy warship:

An anti-submarine warfare ship being built for the Italian Navy cancelled before it was
completed because WW I ended was converted into a motor yacht with a full sail rig in
the 1920’s. It became the cruise ship Fantome in 1969. It was destroyed with the loss of
life of all crew in Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Austro Hungarian monitor Leitha:

The monitor Leitha was completed in 1871 for use on the navigable rivers of the Austro-
Hungarian empire. In 1922 it was disarmed and converted to a privately owned dredging
ship under the provisions of the Treaties of St. Germain and Trianon. The ship passed
into the state run corporation when Hungary fell to a Communist government in 1948.
The hull became a museum on the Danube in Budapest in 1993.

Uncompleted German Navy submarine hulls;

In the early 1920s, the Gemania yards in Kiel, Germany built two diesel powered ocean
going oil tankers. Each used as part of the bottom side of the hull, the hulls of U-Boats
that had been under construction when WW I ended.
Turkish Navy minelayer Nusrat:

The Ottoman Empire Navy of Turkey had the minelayer with towing capability ship
Nusrat built in Germany between 1911 and 1913. In the early months of WW I the ship
laid several minefields that sank some UK Royal Navy and French navy pre-dreadnaught
battleships. The Turkish navy retained the ship after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The
navy retained the ship in service until 1957. The private firm that bought the ship did not
scrap it. The ship was converted into a diesel powered freighter with all or most of the
original superstructure removed or heavily modified. The stern was modified from the
minelayer configuration to one of a regular freighter. The ship ended service as a
freighter in 1990 and was derelict until 2002. The city of Mesin , Turkey purchased the
ship in 2002 and moved it ashore. The ship was stripped to the bare hull and restored to
its 1914 configuration . It is now a museum.