Ark Royal - enduring name of five prestigious Navy warships

The name HMS Ark Royal has been given to five Royal Navy ships over the centuries. Their high profile exploits in both war and peace have made this name one of the most famous in British naval history.

The first Ark Royal was an English galleon built at Deptford on the River Thames in 1587 personally for maritime adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. Originally named Ark Ralegh, the ship was then bought by Queen Elizabeth's navy for £5000 and renamed Ark Royal. It had two gun decks and became the flagship of the English fleet during the campaign against the Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1608, under the new monarch James I, the ship was rebuilt and renamed Anne Royal after his queen. However, after a long career of over 50 years, the ship was damaged in an accident and broken up in 1638.

The second Ark Royal was a merchant ship converted to be a pioneering seaplane carrier during the First World War. Launched in 1914, the ship gave valuable service in the Dardanelles and throughout the remaining campaign. It was renamed HMS Pegasus in 1934 to free the name for a new ship, and broken up in 1950.

The third Ark Royal was a 22,000 ton purpose-built aircraft carrier launched in 1937. After taking part in many wartime operations, including the hunt for the Bismarck, it was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat in November 1941. All but one of the Ark Royal's 1,488 crew members survived.

In 1955 a new HMS Ark Royal entered service. It became the Royal Navy's last remaining conventional catapult and arrested-landing aircraft carrier. Still fondly remembered for its starring role in the 1970s BBC documentary TV series Sailor, it eventually went to the breaker's yard in 1980. It took three years to break up, with many former crew visiting the site, and a number of mementoes were kept, including an anchor outside the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton, and another near Plymouth Hoe.

The fifth Ark Royal was another aircraft carrier, built by Swan Hunter on the River Tyne and launched in 1981. Originally to be called Indomitable, it was decided to revive the Ark Royal name after public reaction to the scrapping of the previously-named ship.

Carrying a crew of over 1,000 sailors and aviators, the ship saw service in the 1990s Bosnian War and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. She was decommissioned in 2011. Farewell parades were held in Portsmouth and Leeds, the city that had adopted the Ark Royal in WW2.

The image shows the fourth HMS Ark Royal.