HMS Drake (1901)
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|---|---|
| Drake- class | |
 HMS Drake |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| units | 4th |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | April 24, 1899 |
| Launch | March 5, 1901 |
| Namesake | Francis Drake |
| Commissioning | January 13, 1902 |
| Whereabouts | October 2, 1917 after torpedoing by U 79 sunk |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
14,100 tn.l. |
| length |
L pp = 152.4 m (500 ft ) |
| width |
21.75 m (71.3 ft) |
| Draft |
8.54 m (28 ft) |
| crew |
900 men |
| drive |
43 Belleville water tube boilers |
| speed |
23.05 kn |
| Range |
7000 nm at 14 kn (2500 ts coal) |
| Armament |
2 × 9.2 "-Mk.X -234-mm- L / 47 guns |
|
Armor belt armor |
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| Armored decks |
25–64 mm (1–2½ inch) |
| Armored bulkheads |
127 mm (5 inch) |
| Towers |
152 mm (6 inch) |
| Barbeds |
152 mm (6 inch) |
| Casemates |
50–127 mm (2–5 inches) |
| Ammunition shafts |
76 mm (3 inch) |
| Command post |
305 mm (12 inch) |
The HMS Drake was the lead ship of the class of British armored cruisers named after her . From January 1905 the Drake was the flagship of cruiser squadrons and came into the reserve in 1913. When war broke out in 1914, the outdated armored cruiser was reactivated and in 1916 sent to the "North American Station". It served to secure convoy across the North Atlantic and was torpedoed on October 2, 1917 by the German submarine U 79 near Rathlin Sound , Northern Ireland .
The HMS Drake sank in Church Bay on Rathlin Island at position 55 ° 17 ′ N , 6 ° 12 ′ W just a few hundred meters from the coast. In the sinking, 18 seafarers were killed who had been in the boiler room hit by the torpedo.
technical description
The lead ship of the Drake class was a considerably enlarged version of the previous Cressy class , with which the Royal Navy returned to building armored cruisers after a long break. She displaced 14,100 tons, was 162.6 m long (152.4 m waterline), 21.75 m wide, and had a 8.5 m draft.
Two triple expansion steam engines with four cylinders each generated a total of 30,000 ihp and gave the cruiser a speed of up to 24 knots. The range of the coal-fired ship was 7,000 nautical miles. The crew was 900 officers and men.
Armament
The armament consisted of two 9.2-inch 234-mm guns in single barbeds fore and aft as on the Cressy-class. The sixteen 6 inch 152 mm L / 45 casemate guns were built in casemates one above the other. As a result, the four lower guns on each broadside were very close to the waterline and hardly usable in rough seas. During a renovation in 1916, the lower guns were removed and the casemates closed there. for this purpose, four 152 mm guns were placed behind protective shields on the upper deck on each side of the ship.
Twelve 12-pounders and three 3-pounders of the Hotchkiss type were available as light weapons . There were also two 45 cm underwater torpedo tubes of the “Fiume” (Whitehead) type.
A fire control system was installed in 1905/06.
Armor
The armor was of the Krupp type. The belt armor amidships was 152 mm thick and decreased to 51 mm fore and aft. The barbeds and the turrets of the heavy artillery had 152 mm armor, the casemates 50 to 127 mm and the command post 305 mm.
Mission history
The HMS Drake was laid down on April 24, 1899 at the naval shipyard in Pembroke Dock . On March 5, 1901, she was launched as the second Drake- class cruiser and entered service on January 13, 1903 as the second cruiser of the new class. She was assigned to the Cruiser Squadron, whose flagship was the sister ship HMS Good Hope , which was currently on a voyage to South Africa. The first commandant of the Drake was the later First Sea Lord Francis Charles Bridgeman (1848–1929), who was followed in 1903 by another later First Sea Lord , John Jellicoe . On July 30th, the Drake visited Galway in Ireland with the armored cruisers Good Hope , Sutlej , Hogue and four destroyers on the occasion of a visit by King Edward VII.
The HMS Drake was on January 31, 1905 with Mark Edward Frederic Kerr as commanding flagship of the new 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet under Rear Admiral Prince Louis von Battenberg , the four other armored cruisers of the smaller Monmouth- class with HMS Berwick , HMS Belonged to Cornwall , HMS Cumberland and HMS Essex . HMS Bedford joined in the summer of 1905 . By June 1906, the new armored cruisers HMS Duke of Edinburgh and HMS Black Prince replaced the Essex and Bedford . After an inspection by King Edward VII , who also spent a night on board, the armored cruiser left Portsmouth on March 1, 1905 for its new port of operation, Gibraltar. From there she left for exercises and visits to the Mediterranean on April 20 and was visited by the Greek royal couple in the Bay of Phaleron in mid-May . On June 25th, the Drake was back in Gibraltar, which she left again on July 6th to visit Lisbon , where she was visited by the Portuguese royal couple . On August 1, she left Gibraltar again with the squadron to visit Canada and the United States. The squadron arrived in Quebec on August 11th and then visited St. John's (Newfoundland) , Sydney (Cape Breton), Charlottetown , Halifax , Annapolis on November 1st and New York from November 9th to 20th with an American squadron where Prince Louis was setting up a ball. The squadron's return trip across the Atlantic was conducted as a race that began on the 20th at 10.30 a.m. and ended on November 28 at 1.35 a.m. in Gibraltar. The flagship Drake won the race with a lead of 1500 m over the Berwick , which she had already run away from 3 nm en route and the Cumberland, which was steadily catching up at the end . Cornwall and Essex gave up shortly before the end as they were now almost an hour behind. Only the Bedford was damaged on the 25th when the starboard wave ran hot and she had to stop temporarily. The Drake reached a speed of only 18.504 kn over the entire route. After a higher speed at the beginning, she had problems with poorer American coal from the fourth day and then, like all ships, with the supply from the reserve bunkers, which was only possible to a certain extent with the use of the free watch. The Belleville boilers, which were often criticized in the past, did not cause any problems. However, the Berwick boiler of the Niclausse type , which came in second place, and Cornwall, which did not intervene in the decision, used the Babcock & Wilcox type .
On January 14, 1906, the Drake arrived in Spithead to take part in the launch of the HMS Dreadnought . In March, the armored cruiser was back on station in Gibraltar, in order to travel the Mediterranean again from there. At the beginning of April he called Phaleron to take part in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games , to which the British royal couple and heir to the throne also traveled. At the end of the month the Drake traveled alone to Venice , where the ship was inspected by the Grand Duke of Hesse , Battenberg's brother-in-law. In early May, the cruiser ran via Corfu to Phaleron to join the British Mediterranean fleet under Lord Charles Beresford , which was on heightened alert due to tensions with Turkey. On May 13, the Drake arrived with four destroyers in Larnaka , Cyprus , and deployed a landing party. On May 31, she was back in Gibraltar, preparing for maneuvers of the Atlantic Fleet with the Canal Fleet, which began on June 2. During the maneuvers she carried out radio experiments over longer distances. She belonged to the fleet attacking the canal based in Berehaven and visited the channel island of Alderney . In the 2nd part of the maneuvers carried out from June 24th, the Drake represented attacking trade troublemakers, was placed by the 1st cruiser squadron in front of Cabo de São Vicente and rated as destroyed. On July 2, she therefore returned to Portsmouth, where the Commandant married. The Drake visited Portland and Bangor , where sports competitions were held for the fleet and the Drake again won the "Battenberg Cup". After staying in Lough Swilly and Tarbert on the River Shannon , the 2nd cruiser squadron ran back to Gibraltar from August 24th to 28th in a top speed test. An American cruiser squadron then visited Gibraltar, which was celebrated with sporting competitions. At the beginning of November, the Battenbergs squadron visited Malaga and the Drake was visited there by the Spanish royal couple . Queen Victoria was a niece of the admiral. The squadron then relocated to Italy and returned to Gibraltar in December. From December 12th to 15th, the Drake ran with the Governor of Gibraltar from there in a storm to Portsmouth. On February 7, 1907, she left England again for naval maneuvers off the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. After completing it, she returned to Gibraltar on February 23rd and Prince Louis and his staff moved to HMS Venerable as deputy commander of the Mediterranean fleet. The new commander of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron was Rear Admiral Charles Adair (1851-1920), who in 1908 at the request of the First Sea Lord Fisher joined the Canal Fleet as 1st Cruiser Squadron in exchange for Rear Admiral Percy Scott (1853-1924) and his squadron, the now the 2nd Cruiser Squadron in the Atlantic Fleet. Scott, valued by Fisher, who publicly argued with his superior Beresford, was supposed to conduct a demonstration trip with the 2nd Squadron to South Africa and South America. The Drake provided mostly routine service in the Atlantic and the North Sea. The first cruiser squadron was joined by the more modern HMS Minotaur and the first British battlecruisers of the Invincible class . In 1909 she represented the Royal Navy at the "Hudson Fulton Celebrations" in New York as the flagship of Rear Admiral Frederick T. Hamilton together with the battle cruiser HMS Inflexible under Admiral Edward Seymour and the armored cruisers HMS Duke of Edinburgh and HMS Argyll . In 1910 the 1st Cruiser Squadron was assigned to the Home Fleet . In 1911, the Drake was sent to Australia on November 30, 1911, met with the HMS Powerful it had replaced in Colombo at the end of January 1912 and took over parts of the crew from it. She served until January 1913 as the flagship of Australia Station of the Royal Navy under Vice Admiral Sir George King-Hall (1850-1939), on which the protected cruisers 2nd class Challenger and Encounter as well as the older Cambrian and five smaller cruisers of the Pelorus are located -Class found. The station had already dispatched the two small cruisers to the temporary reinforcement of the China station and was in the process of being dissolved, since the newly created Australian Navy was to take over responsibility in 1913.
After returning home, the crew of the Drake was reduced and the ship was assigned to the reserve.
After the outbreak of the First World War , the Drake was reactivated and assigned to the 6th Cruiser Squadron with her sister ships. This squadron was intended for the Grand Fleet in Scapa Flow to replace the 4th Cruiser Squadron (4th Cruiser Squadron), consisting of old Monmouth- class armored cruisers , which had previously belonged to the North America and West India station under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock had been sent to protect British interests during the Mexican Revolution.
The first order for the old armored cruiser was the escort for the Olympic arriving from New York with a transfer crew , which was picked up in the Atlantic and escorted to Liverpool . In January 1915, routine service began with the 6th Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet. In October 1915 the ship was overhauled and then in 1916 assigned to the "North America and West Indies Station" for tasks in the convoy security. In 1916, the armament was changed during another overhaul by locking the lower casemates and installing upper deck cannons.
The loss of HMS Drake
On October 2, 1917, the Drake arrived with the HH24 convoy from America in front of the northern entrance to the Irish Sea and had just given the signal that the convoy should dissolve and that the individual ships should now call at their ports of destination independently when they were from the German submarine U 79 under Kapitänleutnant Otto Rohrbeck was torpedoed north of Rathlin Island at 09:15 a.m. The hit flooded the second boiler room, in which 18 men were killed. The commander of the cruiser, Captain Stephen Herbert Radcliffe , initially hoped to be able to reach Belfast with his damaged ship , but realized after discussion with his chief engineer that this was not possible and ran to the nearest anchorage in Church Bay from Rathlin Iceland.
The torpedo hit had disabled the steam-powered rudder of HMS Drake and she was steering with the propellers. Due to the limited controllability, she collided at 10:37 a.m. with the freighter Mendip Range , which was so badly damaged that it had to be beached in Ballycastle Bay, Ireland . At 11:30 the destroyer HMS Brisk , which was hurrying to help, was "hit" and broke; the bow section sank, the stern could be towed to Londonderry. 31 Brisk sailors were killed. The freighter Lugano , 2375 ts, sank after another "hit". Both were probably victims of a mine lock laid out by U 79 .
The Drake anchored at 11:46 a.m. in Church Bay. The returned security ships largely hid the crew. Captain Radcliffe stayed on board with a small group to keep the armored cruiser afloat until salvage ships arrived. But its list increased steadily, so that finally HMS Martin and HMS Delphinium went alongside and dismantled the remaining crew and the commander by 14:04. At 14:35, the HMS Drake capsized , with parts of the starboard side of the ship sticking out of the water.
The German U 79 was a type UE submarine . When surfaced, it displaced 755 t, had only two torpedo tubes and was able to transport 38 mines. It survived the war and was eventually extradited to France, where it remained in service as Victor Reveille until 1933 .
Sister ships
| ship | Also builds machine |
Keel laying | Launch | Commissioning | fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HMS Good Hope |
Fairfield ; Govan |
September 11, 1899 | February 21, 1901 | November 8, 1902 | Sunk on November 1, 1914 in a naval battle near Coronel , 926 dead |
| HMS Leviathan |
John Brown , Clydebank |
November 30, 1899 | July 3, 1901 | June 16, 1903 | sold for demolition on March 3, 1920 to Hughes Bolckow in Blyth |
| HMS King Alfred |
Vickers , Barrow |
August 11, 1899 | October 28, 1901 | December 22, 1903 | Badly damaged by torpedo on April 11, 1918, sold to the Netherlands for demolition on January 30, 1920 |
literature
- Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (eds.): Warships of the World 1860 to 1905 . tape 1 : Great Britain / Germany . Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5402-4 .
- Geoffrey Bennett: The sea battles of Coronel and Falkland and the sinking of the German cruiser squadron under Admiral Spee (= Heyne books. 5697). Translated from English, supplemented and with an afterword by RK Lochner. Wilhelm Heyne, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-453-01141-4 .
- Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I . Studio Editions, London 1990, ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .
- Joseph A. Minter: The cruise of HMS "Drake". A record of an eventful commission with the second cruiser squadron, January, 1905 - May, 1907. Gale & Polden, London 1907.
Web links
- The Dreadnought Project Technical details of the ships; also Good Hope
- Drake class in World War I (English)
- Drake- class historyofwar (English)
- HMS Drake battleships-cruisers (English, several pictures, trips)
- HMS Drake blueprints, also more cracks on the site
- The sinking of HMS Drake
- Drake wreck at Rathlin Island
- detailed report on the wreck of the Drake near Rathlin Island (PDF, 1.1 MB)
- The Drake in New York
Individual evidence
- ↑ L pp = length between perpendiculars or length between perpendiculars: distance between the axis of the rudder stock and the trailing edge of the leading edge in the construction waterline.
- ^ "North America and West Indies Station", main base in Bermuda
- ↑ Information on the British 9.2 ″ / 47 (23.4 cm) Mark X gun (English)
- ↑ Information on the British 6 ″ / 45 (15.2 cm) Mark VII gun (English)
- ↑ Information on the British 12-pdr 3 "-L / 40 (7.62 cm) - 12cwt QF Marks I, II and V guns (English)
- ↑ Information on the British Hotchkiss 3 pdr gun (English)
- ↑ Representation of the race in Brassey's 1906
- ↑ Information on Radcliffe
- ↑ HMS Brisk , Acorn or H-Class Destroyer , 1910 John Brown, 730 ts
- ↑ HMS Martin , Acorn or H-Class Destroyers , 1910 Thornycroft, 730 ts
- ^ HMS Delphinium , Arabis-Class Sloop , 1910 Napier and Miller, 1250 ts