HMS Sirius (1892)

HMS Sirius was an Apollo-class cruiser of the British Royal Navy which served from 1892 to 1918 in various colonial posts such as the South and West African coastlines and off the British Isles as a hastily converted minelayer during the First World War. In April 1918, Sirius was deliberately scuttled in the mouth of Ostend harbour in Belgium during the failed First Ostend Raid. This operation was intended to block the harbour mouth and prevent the transit of German U-boats and other raiding craft from Bruges to the North Sea. German countermeasures were however too effective, and Sirius and its fellow blockship HMS Brilliant were eventually destroyed by their crews outside the harbour mouth after running aground on a sandbank. The wrecks were broken up after the war.