Eclipse class

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flag
Eclipse class
HMS Talbot
HMS Talbot
Overview
Type Protected cruiser
units 9
Shipyard
Keel laying 1893-1895
Launch 1894-1896
Commissioning 1896-1898
Technical specifications
displacement

5,600 ts

length

pp : 106.75 m (350 ft )
above sea level : 113.75 m (373 ft)

width

16.3 m (53.5 ft)

Draft

6.25 m (20.5 ft)

crew

450 men

drive
speed

18.5 kn

Range

?? sm at 10 kn

Armament
Armament from 1905
Armor
deck


30-76 mm

Engine room

76 mm

Gun shields

30-76 mm

Command tower

30-56 mm

The Eclipse-class or Talbot-class was a class of nine armored cruisers of the Royal Navy that was developed from the armored cruisers of the Astraea class . Three of the ships were built at different naval shipyards, while the three private shipyards involved in the construction built two cruisers each. From 1905, the cruisers were converted to a standard main armament of eleven 6-inch (152-mm) rapid-fire guns, with the exception of the Eclipse . When the First World War broke out , eight Eclipse- class cruisers formed the 11th and 12th cruiser squadrons set up during the mobilization to secure the sea routes across the Atlantic. From the end of 1914, the cruisers were relieved there and partly distributed to other stations of the Royal Navy, where they remained in service until the end of the war. They were then sold for demolition from 1919 to 1921. Only the Dido had been converted into a depot ship for submarines in 1912 and served as a depot ship for destroyers in Harwich from 1914 to 1926 .

Building history

Eclipse- class cracks from Brassey's Naval Annual 1896

The nine cruisers of the Eclipse class were ordered as part of the Spencer Naval Program of 1893, which updated the British Naval Act of 1889, and represented a further development of the previous Astraea class. As with this class, the new ships displaced considerably more than theirs at 5,600 ts Predecessor without significantly increasing combat strength. The main battery was increased by a further gun at the stern to eleven guns. A mixed-caliber battery was also retained, with five 6-inch guns now installed. In addition to the bow gun and the now two rear guns, there were also the two front guns of the guns set up on the side. Their installation in swallow nests and the entry of the forecastle also led to an increase in the bow fire. The broadside of the ships, however, was hardly reinforced.

As of 1905, eight of the cruisers (all except the Eclipse ) were converted to eleven 6-inch guns. The old weapons were replaced by modern guns.

Mission history

The keel laying of the three cruisers to be finished by the state shipyards took place between December 1893 and March 1894 and the HMS Eclipse was launched on July 19, 1894 as the first ship of the class in Portsmouth . The Devonport built HMS Talbot entered service on September 15, 1896 as the first ship of the class for the North America and West Indies station . Six more cruisers followed in 1897, and most recently the HMS Dido and HMS Isis, built in Govan by London & Glasgow Shipbuilding, in May 1898.

Pre-war missions

The cruisers of the Eclipse class served primarily as fleet cruisers. However, the conflicts at the turn of the century immediately led to deployments abroad.

The Doris cannon

The HMS Doris was used under Captain Reginald C. Prothero as the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Robert Harris from 1899 to 1900 in the Second Boer War in South Africa. Under their commanding officer, most of the crew fought ashore in a naval brigade from November 1899 . Searchlights and two 120 mm guns were also handed over to support the army on land. One of the Boers in command, General Piet Cronjé , was interned on the Doris for a few weeks after his surrender at Paardeberg in February 1900 before he went into exile in St. Helena . On October 7, 1900 the cruiser returned to Plymouth . In 1904 a memorial was erected in memory of the dead. The HMS Dido under captain Philip Francis Tillard, HMS Isis and HMS Eclipse were temporarily relocated to the China station after the turn of the century because of the unrest in China . In March 1900, the HMS Juno transferred the body of the British Field Marshal Sir Donald Stewart, who had died in Algiers , from there to Gibraltar . From April to September 1901, Juno , commanded by Captain HO Routh, accompanied the royal yacht HMS Ophir together with the HMS St George of the Edgar class during a voyage of the Duke of Cornwall and York with his wife through the colonies on the section from Aden via Colombo and Singapore to Melbourne , where the heirs to the throne attended the opening of the Parliament of the Australian Federation . Via Sydney , Auckland , Mauritius the journey continued to South Africa and finally on the way to Canada to São Vicente (Cape Verde) , where the two cruisers handed over the securing of the yacht to HMS Diadem and HMS Niobe . Juno and St George had left Portsmouth eight days before the yacht and then awaited them in Aden.

When escorting the yacht in the Mediterranean, the HMS Diana , which is in operation there between Gibraltar and Malta, was also used. Diana , who was repeatedly deployed in the Mediterranean until 1913, checked Turkish positions on the Gulf of Aqaba for a possible violation of the border with Egypt in February 1906 .

The HMS Talbot observed the battle between Japanese units and the Russian cruiser Varyag and the gunboat Korejez in Chemulpo on February 9, 1904 at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, and after they scuttled , evacuated the Russian survivors to Hong Kong with a French and an Italian cruiser .

In 1906, HMS Dido and HMS Juno were assigned to the Channel Fleet , HMS Diana , HMS Minerva and HMS Venus to the Mediterranean Fleet and HMS Isis to the 4th Cruiser Squadron on the North America & West Indies station . The HMS Eclipse , HMS Doris and HMS Talbot were in the reserve in Portsmouth, Devonport and Sheerness, respectively. The Minerva was involved in the relief efforts after the earthquake in Messina on December 28, 1908 and was therefore by the Italian King Victor Emanuel III. excellent. The Diana was used off Crete in 1909 to monitor the international status of the island.

War effort

When the war began, Juno , Doris , Isis , Minerva and Venus formed the 11th Cruiser Force E, stationed in Queenstown , Ireland , which controlled the southern entrance to the Irish Sea . The Eclipse , Diana and Talbot came to the 12th Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss , the also the HMS Charybdis belonged to the Astraea class and also as Cruiser Force G was called. This controlled the canal entrance together with French forces who also cooperated with the "Force E" and whose core were six armored cruisers of the French 2nd Light Squadron, such as the Dupetit-Thouars . Both squadrons brought some German merchant ships on their way home.

Florizel

The 12th cruiser squadron was then given the task of securing the transfer of the first Canadian division to Europe. Rear Admiral Wemyss sailed to Canada with his four old cruisers ( Charybdis as flagship) and began the return trip on October 3, 1914 with a convoy of 32 ships, of which the Lapland , Red Star Line, 18,694 GRT, the largest and the Florizel , Red Cross Line, 3081 GRT, with Newfoundland's contribution on board, which was the last ship to join before Cape Race , was probably the smallest. In total, the ships had 30,617 soldiers, 7,679 horses, 70 cannons, 110 automobiles and considerable pieces of equipment on board. The convoy, which ran in three rows, was joined by the ship of the line HMS Glory , which had served as a guard ship and flagship of the North America and West Indies station in Halifax (Nova Scotia) since August . Contrary to what was planned, the station did not deliver any further cruisers, as the commander needed them to guard the German ships in American ports. In the middle of the Atlantic, the liner HMS Magnificent , most recently a guard ship in Scapa Flow , and the battle cruiser HMS Princess Royal were waiting for the convoy, which started three days late and more slowly. The planned march to Portsmouth was omitted because of the submarine danger and the unloading took place in Plymouth. The Germans had received information about a large troop transport and sent two submarines ( U 8 , U 20 ) into the canal. However, they thought the call to a French port was more likely, since they assumed an immediate operational readiness of the Canadian troops. The contingent thus reached Europe almost unmolested.

From the 11th cruiser squadron, Minerva went to the 9th cruiser squadron in August and continued into the Mediterranean in September, which the Doris followed. In November 1914, both were available against the new opponent Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean. In July 1915, Juno and Venus went to the Persian Gulf . The Isis remained in the operational area and belonged to the North America and West Indies station since 1916. Talbot
moved from the 12th cruiser squadron to the Dardanelles in April 1915 , Diana to China Station in November 1915 and Eclipse was converted into a barge for submarine crews in 1915.

Use in the Mediterranean and on the Dardanelles

Doris and Minerva reached the eastern Mediterranean in 1914 through escort duties. The Doris under Captain Frank Larken cleared the coast of Palestine and Syria and disrupted Turkish communication routes. Minerva explored the Gulf of Aqaba , shot at Turkish troops and then stayed as a security on the Suez Canal , where in February 1915 she was involved in repelling the almost successful Turkish attack. Both cruisers then moved to the Dardanelles. On the approach they were involved in the destruction of the Turkish torpedo boat Demir Hissar (1906, 97t, 3 TR) on April 17th . The boat with a German-Turkish crew tried to run into the Aegean Sea after unsuccessfully attacking transporters. It was south of Chios by the British destroyer Jed , Kennet and Wear the River class discovered and prosecuted. The German commander finally put his boat on the rocks so as not to let it fall into the hands of the superior British units.

On March 27, 1915, the Talbot arrived in Tenedos . With the Minerva, she was placed under the first squadron that supported the British main landings on the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula on April 25 . The Doris belonged to the 3rd Squadron, which supported a mock attack on Bolayır with Canopus , Dartmouth and two destroyers . In June the Talbot became the flagship of the Navy Commander at Gaba Tepe and on August 6 it was the flagship of the 3rd Squadron during the landings at Suvla . The Talbot remained in front of the peninsula during the entire Gallipoli campaign and last supported the evacuation of the ANZAC section in December 1915 and the last retreat from Cape Helles in January 1916. In May 1916 she left the Mediterranean station and moved to the Cape Squadron in South Africa, where she stayed until the end of the war and was mostly deployed off German East Africa , where the German Schutztruppe still held its own against the British troops and the Allies created a new one in May Offensive began.

The seaplane carried by the Doris recognized on April 27, 1915 that the Goeben with the Torgut Reis were firing at the British troops who had landed at the head of Gallipolis from the Dardanelles. The Doris and her aircraft then directed the fire of the HMS Queen Elizabeth , which forced the Goeben to retreat from the narrow fairway. The Doris then took some special tasks. In May she explored the possibility of setting up a submarine base on the Anatolian coast near Izmir . On October 1, she ran to Saloniki as a forward radio station to prepare the planned landing of the Entente troops . On October 21st, Captain Larken and the Doris led the squadron that bombarded the then Bulgarian port of Alexandroupoli (Dedeagatch) and interrupted the railway line from Salonika to Constantinople. It was not until March 1917 that the Doris was withdrawn from the Mediterranean to the East Indies station.

The Minerva had already left the Mediterranean for China Station in 1916 after supporting a diversionary attack by 300 men at the end of the Gulf of Saros while landing at Suvla in August 1915 .

Further missions

wolf

In 1917, most of the Eclipse- class cruisers were involved in the hunt for the German auxiliary cruiser Wolf in the Indian Ocean, which laid mines off Cape Town on January 16, 1917 and then off Colombo and Bombay in February . He was the first steamer to stop the former Hansa steamer Gutenfels , which had been captured by the British, and sent it to Aden as an auxiliary cruiser Iltis with further mines . The polecat was found there by British naval forces, while the wolf had largely evaded the search by marching to New Zealand and the Indonesian archipelago. The old Eclipse cruisers were supposed to protect trade in the Indian Ocean. Diana was stationed with Venus in Singapore at the beginning of the year and moved to Colombo after the arrival of Japanese units in March and was deployed between India and the Red Sea from August. Venus initially stayed off the Burmese and Malay coasts and did not move to Colombo until November. The Doris came from the Mediterranean in March 1917 and initially served between Fremantle and Mauritius and from November on from Aden. Juno was in Muscat at the beginning of the year , from Colombo together with the Diana from March and searched the Maldives in December due to a belatedly evaluated tip, while Venus searched the Chagos Archipelago , where the German auxiliary cruiser actually emptied prizes in October and again at the beginning of November and had overhauls carried out. Minerva was off Socotra at the beginning of the year and operated the rest of the year off the East African coast, where the Talbot was also used. None of the six cruisers used came really close to the Wolf , which had passed the Cape of Good Hope again at the beginning of December 1917 and returned to Kiel in February 1918 after a journey of 444 days.

At the end of the war Diana  - in the Red Sea since 1918 -, Doris (since March 1917), Juno (since July 1915?) And Venus (since 1917) formed the East Indies Station with the Euryalus . At the Cape of Good Hope Station were the Talbot (since May 1916) and the Minerva ( detached to East Africa from China in early 1917) alongside the flagship Hyacinth , the Challenger and the Astraea .
The Isis had been on the North America and West Indies station with eleven armored cruisers and the Highflyer since 1916 .
The Eclipse has had support tasks since 1915 as a residential ship for submarine crews and the Dido in Harwich, which was converted into a depot ship for destroyers before the war began .

Whereabouts of the cruiser

Surname shipyard Keel laying Launch completion fate
Eclipse Portsmouth RDY December 1893 July 19, 1894 March 23, 1897 12th CS, 1915 residential ship, demolished in 1921
Talbot Devonport RDY March 1894 April 25, 1895 September 15, 1896 12th CS, 1915 Mediterranean, 1916 East Africa, 1921 for demolition
Minerva Chatham RDY 4th December 1893 September 23, 1895 February 4, 1897 11th CS, 1914 Mediterranean, 1916 China, 1917 Indian Ocean, 1920 for demolition
Diana Fairfield August 1894 December 5, 1895 June 15, 1897 12th CS, 1915 China, 1918 Red Sea, 1920 for demolition
Juno Vickers June 1895 November 16, 1895 June 16, 1897 11th CS, 1915 Persian Gulf, 1920 for demolition
Venus Fairfield June 1894 September 5, 1895 November 9, 1897 11th CS, 1915 Persian Gulf, 1916 China, 1917 Indian Ocean, 1921 for demolition
Doris Vickers August 29, 1894 March 3, 1896 November 18, 1897 12th CS, 1914 Mediterranean Sea, 1917 Indian Ocean, aborted 1919 Bombay
Dido London & Glasgow Shipbuilding August 1894 March 20, 1896 June 15, 1898 Depot ship Harwich, demolished in 1926
Isis London & Glasgow August 1894 June 27, 1896 May 10, 1898 11th CS, 1916 North America and West Indies Station, canceled in 1920
Source: Conway's 1860-1905, p. 77

literature

  • RA Burt: British Battleships 1889-1904. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1988, ISBN 0-87021-061-0 .
  • Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Eds.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. Conway Maritime Press, London 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
  • FJ Dittmar, JJ Colledge: British Warships 1914-1919. Ian Allen, London 1972, ISBN 0-7110-0380-7 .
  • Norman Friedman: British Cruisers of the Victorian Age. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley 2012, ISBN 978-1-84832-099-4 .
  • Paul G. Halpern: A naval history of World War I. Routledge 1995.
  • Tony Gibbons: The Complete Encyclopedia of Battleships and Battlecruisers: A Technical Directory of All the World's Capital Ships From 1860 to the Present Day. Salamander Books Ltd., London 1983.
  • Randal Gray (Ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1985, ISBN 0-87021-907-3 .
  • Keith McBride: The Cruiser Family Talbot . In: John Jordan (Ed.): Warship 2012. Conway, London 2012, ISBN 978-1-84486-156-9 .

Web links

Commons : Eclipse- class cruiser  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Gardiner, Robert (ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905 . Conway Maritime Press, London 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 , pp. 78 .
  2. ^ Archibald, Edward Hunter Holmes: The Metal Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy 1860-1970 . Blandford, London 1971, ISBN 0-7137-0551-5 , pp. 101 .
  3. ^ McBride: The Cruiser Family Talbot.
  4. ^ Friedman: British Cruisers of the Victorian Age.
  5. ^ Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921. P. 77.
  6. ^ Memorial to the eleven Doris dead in Plymouth.
  7. ↑ Hansard HC Deb 20 July 1900 vol 86 cc640-1, China — Anti-Foreign Outbreak — Increase of British Forces
  8. ↑ Inquiry in the lower house
  9. ↑ The Journey of the Ophir
  10. ↑ Halpern, p. 24
  11. ↑ Burt, p. 156
  12. ^ Antrim, Berwick, Carnarvon, Cornwall, Cumberland, Devonshire, Donegal, Duke of Edinburgh, King Alfred, Leviathan, Roxburgh