HMS Cornwall (1902)

HMS Cornwall was a 9,800 ton armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy.

She was laid down at Pembroke Dock 11 March 1901, launched in 1902, and commissioned in 1904.

On August 6, 1911 the Cornwall ran aground on Pinnacle Rock, off Cape Sable Island (Nova Scotia). At the time, she was assisting HMCS Niobe, which had also run aground. Both cruisers were refloated.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 she was dispatched to West Africa to intercept German merchant shipping. She then proceeded to the Falkland Islands in the squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee, consisting of the battlecruisers HMS Inflexible (1907) and HMS Invincible (1907), the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Canopus (1897), two armoured cruisers, three light cruisers and one armed merchant cruiser.

On 8 December 1914 Sturdee's squadron encountered a German squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee, consisting of the heavy cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau together with the light cruisers SMS Nürnberg, SMS Leipzig and SMS Dresden (1907).

In the ensuing battle of the Falkland Islands, Cornwall assisted in the sinking of Leipzig. Of the five ships of the Kaiserliche Marine, only Dresden escaped.

Following the battle, Cornwall returned to West Africa. In June 1915 she was sent to support the Dardanelles Campaign.

In October 1916 she was sent to the East Indies and China Stations to protect Allied shipping from surface raiders. She returned to the United Kingdom in 1917 where she was refitted. For the remainder of the war she escorted convoys between Canada and the UK.

She paid off early in 1919 and was scrapped in 1920.