HMY Victoria and Albert was a royal yacht of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. The yacht was designed by the Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy Sir William White, launched in 1899 and ready for service in 1901. This was the third yacht to be named Victoria and Albert and she was fitted with steam engines fired by Belleville water-tube boilers. She served four sovereigns, and was decommissioned as royal yacht in 1939, served in the Second World War, and was broken up in 1954. Background and Construction Queen Victoria had lobbied Parliament for many years for a more modern yacht – dated from 1855 – and winning this expenditure after pointing out that both the Russian Tsar and the German Kaiser had larger and more modern yachts than Great Britain. The yacht was launched at Pembroke Dockyard 9 May 1899 by the Duchess of York. She was completed in the summer 1901, seven months after the death of Queen Victoria. The total cost of the ship was £572,000, five-sevenths the cost of the battleship . The vessel had an antiquated look when launched as the design was made to resemble the 1855 side wheel steamer . Unlike yachts of other monarchs of the time the vessel was purely a yacht, not a combination yacht and warship. The yacht's dimensions were length overall, length between perpendiculars, beam with a displacement of 5,700 tons and draft. Belleville water-tube boilers provided steam powering two sets of vertical four cylinder triple expansion engines with combined 11,000 indicated horse power for eight hours and 7,500 indicated horse power on a continuous basis. The boilers were arranged in two watertight compartments one before the other with six boilers in the forward compartment and nine in the aft compartment. The engines were in two side by side watertight compartments. The engine cylinders with a stroke of were arranged so that two low pressure cylinders () bracketed the high pressure cylinder () placed forward of the intermediate pressure cylinder (). Two propellers with pitch drove the yacht at with maximum speed of . Three dynamo sets provided electric light power. Refrigeration units were placed at the aft end of each engine room. Coal capacity was sufficient for a steaming range of 2,000 miles (type not stated) at . Three masts were rigged fore and aft with two funnels for the five decked vessel. On the