HMS Cornwall (1902)
|
|
|---|---|
 HMS Cornwall |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | March 11, 1901 |
| Launch | October 29, 1902 |
| delivery | December 1, 1904 |
| Namesake | Cornwall county |
| period of service |
1904-1919 |
| Whereabouts | Sale for demolition July 1920 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
9,800 tn.l. |
| length |
pp: 134.11 m (440 ft ) |
| width |
20.12 m (66 ft) |
| Draft |
7.6 m (25 ft) |
| crew |
678 men |
| drive |
|
| speed |
23 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Coal supply |
1,600 tn.l. |
|
Armor belt armor / casemates |
|
| Towers / barbeds |
127 mm (5 in) |
| deck |
50–170 mm (2–7.5 in) |
| Command tower |
250 mm (10 in) |
The sixth HMS Cornwall in the Royal Navy was an armored cruiser of Monmouth - or County class , which was used from 1904 to 1920. She was involved in the naval battle in the Falkland Islands and sank the small cruiser SMS Leipzig .
The sister ships were HMS Monmouth , HMS Essex , HMS Bedford , HMS Kent , HMS Donegal , HMS Berwick , HMS Cumberland , HMS Suffolk and HMS Lancaster .
history
The Cornwall was launched on October 29, 1902 at Pembroke Dockyard in Wales , which had already built the sister ship Essex , and was put into service in December 1904 with the sister ship Cumberland as the last ship of the class.
Like her sister ships, she displaced 9,800 tons, had a maximum speed of 23.6 knots at 22.694 ihp propulsion power in the acceptance test and was the only ship in class 31 with Babcock boilers instead of the usual Belleville boilers of almost all sister ships.
The main armament, consisting of fourteen 6-inch (15.2-cm) rapid-loading guns, four of them in a bow and a stern twin tower and ten in casemates , was comparatively weak for an armored cruiser of the time. Since the lower six casemate guns were not very far above the waterline, they could only be used effectively when the sea was calm. The armor wasn't very strong either.
Missions before the world war
When the Cornwall came into service with the sister ship Cumberland in 1904, both armored cruisers of the Cruiser Squadron were assigned to the Canal Fleet. This cruiser squadron was divided into the 1st and 2nd cruiser squadrons in 1905 and the 2nd squadron was assigned to the Atlantic fleet under Rear Admiral Prince Louis Alexander von Battenberg .
It initially consisted of the HMS Drake as the flagship and four Monmouth- class armored cruisers with HMS Berwick , HMS Cornwall , HMS Cumberland and HMS Essex . In addition, HMS Bedford joined in the summer of 1905 . In 1905 Prince Louis and his squadron first visited ports on the Mediterranean and then from August to November 1905 Canadian and American ports. The return trip from New York to the squadron base in Gibraltar was held as a race in which the Cornwall could not excel. In 1906 the Cornwall with her sister ships Berwick and Cumberland and the Drake belonged as flagship to the 2nd cruiser squadron in the Atlantic fleet, which now also includes the newer armored cruisers HMS Duke of Edinburgh and HMS Black Prince . She then continued to serve in the Home Fleet Association . During this time she also made a trip to the Baltic Sea and visited, among other things, the German port of Swinoujscie . When she was deployed in the North Atlantic in 1911, she ran aground on the Pinnacle Rock off Cape Sable Island on August 6 , when she was the HMCS Niobe , a diadem- class cruiser and one of the cruisers of the Diadem class , which also ran aground on the night of July 30-31 of the first ships in the Royal Canadian Navy , wanted to help. Fortunately, it was soon possible to tow both cruisers free again. However, the Niobe was out for 18 months and has been limited in its top speed since then. During the war, she temporarily served with cruisers of the Monmouth class in the 4th Cruiser Squadron .
War effort
In August 1914, the Cornwall was sent to West Africa to the 5th Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Archibald P. Stoddart . On August 6, 1914, the German merchant ship Syra brought them up.
She was one of the ships that led the naval battle against the German East Asia Squadron on December 8, 1914 at the Falkland Islands and destroyed the squadron. When the Germans appeared off the Falkland Islands on the morning of December 8th, the British were still busy with coal. The Cornwall followed the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible as well as Stoddart's flagship HMS Carnarvon , but fell far behind because of her slower speed. The British battlecruisers made significantly more voyage than the Germans, the good visibility and the calm sea on this day allowed the British to easily see the German ships heading east on the horizon and slowly catch up with them. After Graf Spee had recognized that he could not escape in the closed unit, he dismissed the SMS Leipzig at 1:15 pm and signaled at 1:20 pm: "Small cruisers dismissed. Try to escape! ”The British commanding officer, Doveton Sturdee , reacted immediately: he had expected this behavior. On an agreed signal, the Cornwall , her sister ship Kent and soon afterwards also the HMS Glasgow began to pursue the German small cruisers. Cornwall was supposed to stop Leipzig , which had already been shot by Glasgow . The hits of the Glasgow slowed the Leipzig , so that the Cornwall could catch up and then the Leipzig shot and sunk with their superior armament. It received 18 hits itself, had to flood two bunkers and was somewhat listed. There were no human victims.
In January 1915, the Cornwall moved to East Africa to join the forces against SMS Koenigsberg . Then in June 1915 she was sent to the Dardanelles . In January 1916 she came to the China Station and then in October 1916 to the East Indies Station and was used to protect maritime traffic and to ward off any attacks by trade disruptors. It returned to Great Britain in 1917 for a major overhaul. After this she was used as part of the West Indies and North America Station to escort convoy between Canada and Great Britain.
After the war ended, the Cornwall was decommissioned in 1919 and sold for demolition in July 1920.
literature
- Geoffrey Bennet: Coronel and the Falklands. Birlinn, Edinburgh 2000, ISBN 1-84158-045-7 .
- Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Ed.): Warships of the world 1860 to 1905. Volume 1: Great Britain and Germany. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5402-4 .
- John Moore: Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. Studio Editions, London 1990, ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .
Web links
- Monmouth class at worldwar1 (English)
- Monmouth-Class battleships-cruisers (English)
- Monmouth class at historyofwar (English)
- HMS Cornwall at maritimequest
- including Sturdees report on the battle
Individual evidence
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↑ The only difference between Mk.VII and Mk.VIII was that with Mk.VIII the shutter opened to the left instead of to the right.
The Mk.VIII were installed as a left tube in the twin towers, which made reloading easier,
as the locks swiveled away from the tower walls.