Valhalla RYS was a steam yacht, much admired in her day for her beauty and unusual rigging. She was famous for her participation in the Kaiser's Trans-Atlantic Race of 1905, and the sighting of a Sea-serpent in the Atlantic that same year. She had several owners, most notably Joe Laycock a trans-Atlantic racing yachtsman and Olympian, and Lord Crawford, who employed her as a research vessel on three major voyages from 1902 to 1908, which resulted in the book Three Voyages of a Naturalist : Being an Account of Many Little-Known Islands in Three Oceans Visited by the 'Valhalla' R.Y.S., by M.J. Nicoll, published in 1908. During the Great War she served with the Royal Navy as a part of the Eastern Mediterranean fleet's Aegean Squadron during the Gallipoli campaign. After the War she became a F