High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! HMS Sappho was an Apollo class cruiser of the British Royal Navy which served from 1892 to 1918 in various colonial posts, including service during the Second Boer War in 1901. During the First World War, Sappho and her sisters saw service off the British Isles as hastily converted minelayers. In May 1918, Sappho was ordered to be scuttled in the mouth of Ostend harbour in Belgium following the failed First Ostend Raid. The Second Ostend Raid operation (of which Sappho was a part) 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. Whilst travelling from Dunkirk to Ostend on the day of the attack however, Sappho suffered severe engine damage in a minor boiler explosion and was forced to retire, taking no part in the partial success of the raid. She was not used again during the war, and was scrapped in 1921.