HMS Goliath (1898)
|
|
|---|---|
.jpg) HMS Goliath |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Ship of the line |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | January 4, 1897 |
| Launch | March 23, 1898 |
| period of service |
1900-1915 |
| Commissioning | March 27, 1900 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk 12 May 1915 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
12,950 t |
| length |
120 m |
| width |
23 m |
| Draft |
7.6 m |
| crew |
680-750 men |
| drive |
Water tube boiler |
| speed |
18.25 kn |
| Range |
1,650 nm at 8 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Armor | |
| Belt armor |
150 mm (6 in) |
| Armored bulkhead |
150–200 mm (6–10 in) |
| Barbette |
300 mm (12 in) |
| Towers |
200 mm (8 in) |
| Casemates |
150 mm (6 in) |
| Command tower |
300 mm (12 in) |
| Armored deck |
25–50 mm (1–2 in) |
The HMS Goliath was one of the six Canopus- class ships of the line of the Royal Navy that were built around 1900. In reserve since 1909, the ship was sent to the Indian Ocean soon after the war began. The Goliath was involved in the blockade of the Königsberg in the Rufiji Delta, but was unable to fire at the small cruiser there. The Goliath was sunk on May 13, 1915 off the Dardanelles by the Turkish torpedo boat Muavenet-i Milliye .
Building history
The keel of the HMS Goliath took place on January 4, 1897 on the Chatham Dockyard and the launch on March 23, 1898. In March 1900 she was put into service as the third ship of the class after Canopus and Ocean . She was the fourth ship in the Royal Navy to be named Goliath .
Goliath and her five sister ships were constructed for use in the Far East and could pass the Suez Canal . They were slightly smaller, lighter and faster than the previous Majestic class , although they were slightly longer. In order to save weight, the armor was also slightly reduced. The armor plan also included a new armored deck designed to protect against the steep fire of howitzers . The reason for the development was news that the French navy was planning to install such weapons on their ships. This news turned out to be false.
The Goliath was with four 12-inch L35 - guns in two twin towers fitted at bow and stern. The round barbeds of the turrets allowed the guns to be loaded in any turning position, but only in a certain elevation. As medium artillery, the Goliath carried twelve 6-inch L40 rapid -fire guns in casemates , some of which could also fire directly forwards or backwards.
Like its sister ships, the Goliath had water-tube boilers that produced more steam with less weight than the cylinder boilers on older ships. The class consumed less coal than its predecessors and achieved higher speeds.
Mission history
Operations up to the World War
The Goliath was put into service on March 27, 1900 for use at the China Station . She arrived there at the time of the Boxer Rebellion and operated at times together with the German ships of the line of the Brandenburg class . At the end of 1900 her sister ship HMS Glory arrived at China Station as the second ship of the class and in 1901 the Albion , Ocean and Vengeance followed ; only the Canopus type ship was not used there. The first overhaul of the Goliath took place in Hong Kong from September 1901 to April 1902 . In July 1903 she left China Station for her home country, where she was decommissioned at Chatham Dockyard on October 9, 1903. During this time in the reserve, she was overtaken at Palmers am Tyne from January to June 1904 , in order to then take part in the home maneuvers.
On May 9, 1905, the Goliath returned to the active fleet in Chatham to replace her sister ship HMS Ocean at China Station . During her departure together with the Canopus, Great Britain and Japan renewed their alliance , which allowed the Royal Navy to reduce the strength of the China station and withdraw their ships of the line. The two marching ships of the line were recalled when they reached Colombo on Ceylon in June and the Goliath has now been seconded to the Mediterranean Fleet . In January 1906 she was assigned to the Channel Fleet , where her four sister ships used in China had already arrived the previous year.
_in_1907.jpg)
After installing a new fire control system, the Goliath moved on March 15, 1907 to the Portsmouth Division of the newly formed Home Fleet . In Portsmouth , their machinery was overhauled from August 1907 to February 1908.
After this overhaul, the Goliath was put into service on February 4, 1908 for the Mediterranean fleet . A drive shaft broke on the march to Malta and it took four months to repair before it was able to resume service. The sister ships Glory , Canopus and Ocean were also used here. On April 20, 1909, she returned to Portsmouth and was now assigned to the 4th Division of the Home Fleet in the Nore . During this service she was overhauled in Chatham from 1910 to 1911 and then stationed in Sheerness . In 1913 she was assigned to the 3rd reserve fleet in Pembroke Dock in Wales , where the sister ships Canopus , Albion and Ocean were also located.
War effort
When the First World War broke out in August 1914, the Goliath was taken back into active service and assigned to the 8th Battle Squadron of the Channel Fleet , which operated from Devonport . She was soon sent to Loch Ewe to serve as a guard ship of the Grand Fleet's anchorage and then secured the landing of the Plymouth Marine Battalion in Ostend, Belgium on August 25, 1914 .
On September 20, the Goliath was ordered to the East Indies Station to help secure troop transports. In October she accompanied a convoy to the Persian Gulf and East Africa . It was used to block the German cruiser SMS Koenigsberg and its suppliers. They shelled Dar es Salaam on November 28th and 30th . The first action took place when the British controlled German merchant ships in the port and both sides failed to adhere to existing agreements. There were fights. The then commanding officer of the Goliath , Henry Peel Ritchie , who was seriously wounded as head of the control group, received a Victoria Cross for his service in April 1915 as first officer in the Royal Navy of the World War . The second bombardment was supposed to be in retaliation for the first clash.
From December 1914 to February 1915 the Goliath was overhauled in Simonstown , South Africa . Then she went in March as the flagship of the Commander of the Cape Squadron, Vice Admiral Sir Herbert Goodenough King-Hall , to the Rufiji Estuary, where the attacks on the Königsberg blocked there should be resumed. But even the ship of the line could not reach the German cruiser lying in the river delta with its guns. On March 25, 1915, the Goliath was ordered to run to the Dardanelles to take part in the attack there . The admiral switched to the cruiser HMS Hyacinth and the liner left East Africa on April 1.
Before the Dardanelles
The Goliath , under the command of Captain Thomas Lawrie Shelford , supported the landing at Cape Helles on April 25 as part of the Allied fleet , where it suffered some damage from the Turkish defenders. She supported the Allied forces in the First Battle of Krithia . On May 2, she was hit again by Turkish cannons. The intervention of the heavy artillery of the ships of the line in the land battle had a high moral value for the fighting parties, even if there were in some cases a lack of suitable targets for the heavy artillery.
Loss of Goliath
On the night of May 12th to 13th, the Goliath anchored in foggy conditions together with the HMS Cornwallis in Morto Bay off Cape Helles , secured by five destroyers. At around 01:00, the destroyer Muavenet-i Milliye of the Ottoman Navy with its Turkish-German crew managed to pass the destroyers HMS Beagle and HMS Bulldog and to approach the ships of the line. Muavenet-i Milliye fired two torpedoes, which hit the Goliath almost simultaneously at the height of the forward tower and the forward funnel, causing a powerful explosion. The Goliath began to capsize almost immediately when it was hit by a third torpedo near the aft turret. She capsized for good and took 570 of her 700-strong crew, including the commander, with her into the depths.
Although discovered immediately after the first torpedo hit and taken under fire, the Muavenet-i Milliye managed to escape. The Turkish commander Ahmet Saffet Bey was promoted to major for the sinking of the Goliath . The German flotilla chief on the Muavenet-i Milliye , Kapitänleutnant Rudolph Firle , received the Iron Cross First Class, along with Austro-Hungarian and Turkish awards. For both of them, this success was also beneficial for their post-war careers. Ahmet Saffet Bey was briefly the Turkish naval minister and active in politics. Rudolph Firle became chairman of the board of Norddeutscher Lloyd in the Third Reich .
literature
- Raymond A. Burt: British Battleships 1889-1904. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 1988, ISBN 0-85368-914-8 .
- 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 .
- 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, ISBN 0-86101-142-2 .
- Randal Gray (Ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 1986, ISBN 0-87021-907-3 .
Web links
- Maritimequest photo gallery for HMS Goliath
- Canopus class on worldwar1.co.uk (February 21, 2011)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Burt, p. 141
- ↑ a b Conway, p. 35
- ↑ Conway, pp. 35f; Gibbons, p. 145
- ↑ Conway, p. 35; Gibbons, p. 145
- ↑ a b c d e Burt, p. 158
- ↑ Conway, p. 8, Burt, p. 158
- ↑ a b Conway, p. 8
- ↑ Burt, p. 158; Conway's, p. 8