HMS Ganges (shore establishment)

Mr W J Jordan, the New Zealand High Commissioner, with a group of New Zealand sailors in front of the masthead and figurehead of HMS Ganges.
History
United Kingdom
Name:	HMS Ganges
Commissioned:	May 1865
Fate:	Closed in October 1976
General characteristics
Class and type:	Stone frigate

HMS Ganges was a training ship and later stone frigate of the Royal Navy. She was established as a boys' training establishment in 1865, and was based aboard a number of hulks before moving ashore. She was based alternately in Falmouth, Harwich (from 1899) and Shotley (from 1905). She remained in service at RNTE Shotley until October 1976.

The increasing professionalism of the Royal Navy and the reform of practices during the mid-nineteenth century led to the need to establish new training centres at which recruits could be inducted into navy life. The Admiralty decided to set aside five old laid up hulks in different ports around the country, and use them as bases at which volunteers aged between 15 and 17 could spend a year being educated for future service in the navy. The plan called for an annual intake of 3,500 boys. They were to be trained in seamanship and gunnery, as well as traditional aspects of sea life. One of the hulks chosen to be converted into a school was the old 84-gun second rate ship of the line HMS Ganges. Despite initial objections that her layout made her unsuitable for the task, the decision went ahead.

She put into Devonport on 5 May 1865 and underwent a refit. She took her first intake of 180 boys on 1 January 1866. They had been transferred from the training ship HMS Wellesley, then at Chatham. The Wellesley’s commander, Frederick H. Stevens also came with the boys and became the Ganges’s commanding officer. Having been refitted to provide accommodation for 500 boys, the Ganges was towed to Mylor by the paddle tug Gladiator. She arrived on 20 March 1866 and was anchored in the Carrick Roads.