HMS Good Hope (1901)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
flag
HMS Good Hope
HMS Good Hope
Overview
Type Armored cruiser
Shipyard

Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd. ; Govan ; Construction no. 411

Keel laying September 11, 1899
Launch February 21, 1901
Namesake the Cape of Good Hope
Commissioning November 8, 1902
Whereabouts Sunk on November 1, 1914 in a sea ​​battle near Coronel
Technical specifications
displacement

14,150  tn.l.

length

L pp = 152.4 m (500 ft )
L oa = 162.61 m (533.5 ft)

width

21.74 m (71 ft)

Draft

7.92 m (26 ft)

crew

900 men

drive

43 Belleville water tube boilers 2 four-cylinder
triple expansion machines 30,000 PSi , with acceptance 31,071 PSi

speed

23.05 kn

Range

7000 nm at 14 kn (2500 tons left of coal)

Armament

2 × 9.2 "-Mk.X -234-mm- L / 47 guns
16 × 6" -Mk.VII -152-mm-L / 45-guns
14 × 12-pdr QF -76-mm-guns
3 × 3-pdr QF 47 mm Hotchkiss guns
2 × 45.7 cm (ø 18 in) torpedo tubes

Armor
belt armor


50–152 mm (2–6 inches)

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)

HMS Good Hope was a Drake- class armored cruiser of the British Royal Navy . It was originally supposed to be called HMS Africa , but was renamed before it was launched . She served in the Royal Navy as the flagship of various cruiser squadrons and was also the flagship of the British Mediterranean Fleet from August 1912 to the beginning of 1913. When the war broke out in 1914, the outdated armored cruiser was activated and sent to the North American station. Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock chose her as the flagship and ran with his small squadron, which still included the HMS Monmouth , the HMS Glasgow and the auxiliary cruiser HMS Otranto , towards the German cruiser squadron of Admiral Maximilian von Spee . On November 1, 1914, near Coronel off the Chilean coast, he unexpectedly met the assembled Spees squadron. The HMS Good Hope dropped in the developing Battle of Coronel with the entire crew on the position of 36 ° 59 '  S , 73 ° 49'  W coordinates: 36 ° 59 '1 "  S , 73 ° 48' 49"  W .

technical description

Drake- class rifts

As a Drake-class cruiser , the HMS Good Hope was an enlarged version of the previous Cressy-class , with which the Royal Navy had returned to building armored cruisers after a long break. She displaced 14,150 tons, was 162.6 m long, 21.7 m wide, and had a 7.9 m draft.
Two 4-cylinder triple expansion steam engines with a total of 30,000 ihp gave the cruiser a speed of up to 23 knots. The range of the coal-fired ship was 7,000 nautical miles. The crew was 900 officers and men.

Armament

Heavy artillery tower

The armament consisted of two 9.2 "/ 234 mm guns in single barbeds fore and aft as well as sixteen 6" / 152 mm casemate guns , some of which were very close to the waterline and hardly usable in rough seas due to the installation in casemates on top of each other were. 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 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 Good Hope was laid on September 11, 1899 at Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering in Govan near Glasgow under the hull number 411 and was later to be called HMS Africa . On February 21, 1901, she was launched as the second Drake- class cruiser under the name HMS Good Hope , as the Cape Colony had meanwhile wanted to pay the price of the ship, and was put into service on November 8, 1902. On November 25, 1902, the Good Hope under Captain Charles Edward Madden left Portsmouth for South Africa as the flagship of the commander of the "Cruiser Squadron", Rear Admiral Sir Wilmot H. Fawkes with the British Colonial Minister Joseph Chamberlain on board, who had problems in South Africa after the end of the Second Boer War should resolve. The armored cruiser reached Durban on December 26, 1902 . After taking over coal of 1606 ts in Simonstown , the Good Hope began her return journey on January 24, 1903 in Cape Town without the minister, took over 1780 ts of coal again from February 4 to 6 in São Vicente (Cape Verde) and returned with stays in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (10th to 13th) and the Ría de Arousa (17th to 26th February) back to Portland . Chamberlain later used a mail boat to return to England. On the Good Hope there was a boiler explosion in May 1903, in which 6 men were injured, two of whom died.

In 1905 the Good Hope became the flagship of the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet , which was transferred to the Channel Fleet in 1906 , and the five armored cruisers of the Devonshire class ( HMS Devonshire , HMS Hampshire , HMS Antrim , HMS Argyll and HMS Roxburgh ) belonged to. In 1907 the squadron with five ships took part in the fleet survey on Hampton Roads on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the settlement of the United States from England. The British ships withdrew early after there were misunderstandings in the ranking of the guests.
In 1908 the sister ships Good Hope and Drake exchanged roles with their admirals and squadrons at the request of First Sea Lord Fisher and the Good Hope became the flagship of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron in the Atlantic Fleet . The Rear Admiral Percy Scott , who was valued by Fisher and who publicly argued with his superior Beresford , was supposed to conduct a demonstration trip with the 2nd Squadron to South Africa and South America. On September 8, 1908, this journey began in Portsmouth, in which the
Antrim , Carnarvon and Devonshire also took part in addition to the flagship Good Hope . On September 18, the squadron made the first supply stop in Sao Vicente (Cape Verde), from October 5, the squadron coal again in Saldanha Bay and entered Durban on October 10, where the first meeting of the National on the following day Convention began. The ships could be viewed and large parts of the crews were able to tour South Africa by train. On the 26th, the squadron continued to Port Elizabeth , Simonstown and Cape Town. From there the squadron ran via St. Helena to Rio de Janeiro . On December 12, the squadron anchored off Montevideo , where supplies were replenished from deployed coal steamers. At the request of the President of Uruguay, the squadron stayed in front of Montevideo until Christmas, before heading home via Sao Vicente and Santa Cruz de Tenerife to the squadron's base in Gibraltar. Scott remained in command of the squadron during the first maneuvers off Tetuan before he was relieved on February 15, 1909. This was mostly followed by routine service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. In August 1912, the Good Hope became the flagship of the Mediterranean fleet, which also had the armored cruiser Hampshire , as well as the smaller armored cruisers Lancaster and Suffolk of the Monmouth class.

In early 1913 it was replaced by the battle cruisers Indomitable and Inflexible . With the construction of the new battle cruisers , the Good Hope was obsolete and was assigned to the reserve fleet. She should be made into a training ship for midshipmen and replace high flyers in this task.

First World War

After the outbreak of the First World War , the Good Hope 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 been part of the North America and West India station commanded by Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock had been sent to protect British interests during the Mexican Revolution.

Assuming that the German passenger steamers lying in American Atlantic ports would immediately convert themselves to auxiliary cruisers with guns hidden in their holds , the Admiralty immediately sent the Good Hope to reinforce Cradock's squadron. The ship left Portsmouth under the command of Captain Philip Francklin on August 2, 1914. Upon arrival in Halifax , Nova Scotia , Cradock hoisted his flag on the Good Hope , as it was faster than his previous flagship Suffolk . However, 90% of their crew were reservists who had barely had a chance to become familiar with each other and with the ship. Artillery exercises had hardly been carried out.

In the weeks that followed, the Good Hope escorted British ships to Pernambuco and the Falkland Islands . On October 22, 1914, the Good Hope steamed from Port Stanley (Falkland Islands) around Cape Horn in the South Pacific to take part in the search for Admiral Spee's East Asia Squadron .

Sea battle at Coronel

→ Main article: Sea battle at Coronel

On November 1, 1914, Cradock's small squadron - consisting of the Good Hope , the old armored cruiser Monmouth , the modern light cruiser Glasgow and the auxiliary cruiser Otranto - met Graf Spee's squadron at Coronel off the Chilean coast. Far inferior to the German great cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and in a tactically unfavorable position in front of the setting sun, the Good Hope was sunk in the subsequent naval battle at Coronel . All 926 men in their crew were killed. Likewise, the Monmouth sank with her entire crew, while the Glasgow and the Otranto managed to escape.

Sister ships

ship Shipyard machine Keel laying Launch Commissioning fate
HMS Drake Pembroke Dockyard Humphrys April 24, 1899 March 5, 1901 January 13, 1902 Sunk by U 79 on October 2, 1917 , 18 dead
HMS Leviathan John Brown ,
Clydebank
John Brown 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
Vickers August 11, 1899 October 28, 1901 December 22, 1903 Badly damaged April 11, 1918, sold to the Netherlands for demolition on January 30, 1920

See also

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 .

Web links

Commons : HMS Good Hope (1901)  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Information on the British 9.2 ″ / 47 (23.4 cm) Mark X gun (English)
  2. Information on the British 6 ″ / 45 (15.2 cm) Mark VII gun (English)
  3. Information about the British 12-pdr / 3 "/ 40 (7.62 cm) - 12cwt QF-Mark-I, II and V guns (English)
  4. information on the British Hotchkiss 3-pdr gun (Engl.)
  5. ^ Charles Edward Madden (1862–1935), later Admiral of the Fleet and 1st Sea Lord
  6. ^ Wilmot H. Fawkes (1846–1926), later Admiral
  7. Scott's memoir
  8. Excerpt from a letter from Kapitänleutnant Busch (1st Artillery Officer SMS Gneisenau ) with a description of the sinking of the Good Hope in the sea battle of Coronel in the Federal Archives, accessed on August 28, 2016 ( Memento of the original from November 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesarchiv.de

Remarks

  1. 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.