4 slipway. The ship was launched on 3 December 1885 by the Hon. Mrs. Algernon Littleton and completed in July 1889 at a cost of £204,952. The ship went straight into reserve at Devonport after completion. On 21 March 1902 she was temporarily commissioned by Captain H. L. Fleet, with crewmen from the battleship , to serve as a port guard ship at Queenstown, while the latter ship was undergoing alterations. In 1903, the ship was converted to a submarine tender and served at Sheerness from 1907 to 1917 and then briefly at Portsmouth and Campbeltown, Scotland, before being paid off in 1919 at Chatham Dockyard. South Africa She was sold for £8,000 in November 1920 to the Jersey-born South African entrepreneur T. B. Davis as a memory to his son who died during World War I. Later that month, the ship steamed to West India Dock, Tilbury, for a brief refit and Thames was renamed Training Ship (TS) General Botha, after Louis Botha, the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. Before departing for Plymouth for extra crewmen on 6 January 1921, the ship was visited by Sir Reginald Blanckenberg, High Commissioner for South Africa, and his wife. She set sail from Plymouth on 18 January and ran into a heavy storm in the English Channel that smashed in the inadequately boarded-up sponsons and forced the ship to turn about for Plymouth for repairs where General Botha arrived two days later. The ship departed on 8 February and arrived in Cape Town on 26 March where she was greeted by the Minister of Defence, Colonel Hendrik Mentz and other notables. Davis donated it to a trust on 9 May, with the stipulation that it be used exclusively for the nautical training of British and South African boys, so that they could subsequently serve in ships of the British Empire. The Admiralty agreed to cover the cost to convert General Botha into a training ship at Simon's Town Naval Dockyard and to tow her there from Cape Town in early September. It also agreed to grant the ship a mooring in Simon's Town. The first class of 75 boys reported aboard on 15 March 1922 on a two-year programme and the ship was formally christened as South African Training Ship (SATS) General Botha on 1 April by the wife of the Prime Minister, Jan Smuts. On 15 December,