Elswick cruiser

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Esmeralda
the first Elswick cruiser

In the late 19th century and in the first years of the 20th century , the term Elswick cruiser was understood to mean warships that were built by the British private shipyard Armstrong Whitworth in Elswick . They were a further development of the Armstrong-Rendel cruiser . Elswick is now a district of Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the English north-east coast.

history

The Armstrong shipyard had established a good reputation in civil shipbuilding by around 1880 and was already manufacturing individual components for warships for the Royal Navy . When awarding construction contracts for complete warships of the British Navy, however, the company was repeatedly passed over, as the majority of the heavier British units were built on the state naval shipyards (e.g. in Portsmouth and Chatham ). Therefore, the company management decided to design ships of about cruiser size (the term cruiser as a type designation was new at that time) and to realize them on their own account. The finished units should then be offered for sale internationally. The target group for such “speculative buildings” were primarily small and medium-sized maritime powers, for whom the building or purchase of larger types was out of the question for financial reasons.

The concept turned out to be quite successful, because demand was higher than expected - in addition to Chile , Japan , Argentina (1891 Veinticinco de Mayo and two other cruisers), Brazil , Portugal , China and Turkey (1904 Hamidiye as the last typical representative) bought even the USA (1898) two Elswick cruisers, which were originally intended for Brazil. However, the success soon led to competition, because the British private shipyard Vickers in Barrow also entered the cruiser export business, as did shipyards in Italy , France and Germany . Since some of these competitors pursued completely different constructional concepts than the Armstrong shipyard, the term Elswick cruiser slowly disappeared from contemporary descriptions from around 1905. Of all competitors, however, only the armored cruisers of the Italian Garibaldi class with six export ships achieved real success. Armstrong built more export tonnage than any other British shipyard combined.

construction

Technically, the Elswick cruisers were mostly protected cruisers , i.e. ships with an armored deck , but without belt armor in the waterline . The speed was 17 to 19 knots and was ensured with coal-fired boilers and triple expansion engines.

There is conflicting information about the quality of these units in the literature. Since the ships were out of date in terms of armor and artillery at the beginning of the First World War , they did not have to prove their worth in armed conflicts. The long periods of service that some Elswick cruisers put behind them, however, at least indicate a high quality of workmanship; Also in the USA they seem to have been very satisfied with the two acquired cruisers.

Examples

Source and further reading

  • Jane's Fighting Ships
  • Conway's All The Worlds Fighting Ships