High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! HMS Vindex was a Royal Navy seaplane carrier of the First World War. She had been built in 1905 by Armstrong Whitworth as the Viking, a fast passenger ferry for the Isle of Man Steam Packet. Viking was requisitioned by the Royal Navy on 15 March 1915 for conversion to a seaplane carrier, and was purchased outright on 11 October 1915. She was renamed HMS Vindex to avoid confusion with the destroyer HMS Viking. The ship spent the bulk of her career operating the North Sea where she twice unsuccessfully attacked the German Zeppelin base at Tondern and conducted anti-Zeppelin patrols. One of her Bristol Scout aircraft made the first take-off from an aircraft carrier in late 1915 and another made the first interception of an airship by a carrier-based aircraft in mid-1916 when it unsuccessfully attacked the Zeppelin L. 17. Vindex was transferred to the Mediterranean in 1918 and was sold back to her original owners in 1920.