HMS Hermes (1898)
|
|
|---|---|
 HMS Hermes before the First World War |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Protected cruiser |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | April 30, 1897 |
| Launch | April 7, 1898 |
| Namesake | the Greek god Hermes |
| Commissioning | October 5, 1899 |
| Whereabouts | Sank October 31, 1914 after being hit by a torpedo |
| Technical specifications | |
| since 1913 seaplane carrier | |
| displacement |
5,600 ts |
| length |
overall: 113.5 m (372 ft) |
| width |
16.5 m (54 ft) |
| Draft |
6.7 m (22 ft) |
| crew |
450 men |
| drive |
|
| speed |
20.5 kn |
| Range |
4680 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Fuel supply |
500 (max. 1120) ts coal |
| Armored deck |
76–127 mm (3–5 in) |
| Command post |
152 mm (6 in) |
| from 1913 |
3 seaplanes |
| Sister ships | |
HMS Hermes was a Highflyer- class armored cruiser of the Royal Navy . Commissioned in 1899, the cruiser was dispatched to the North America and West Indies station in 1899 . The damage suffered on the crossing led to a discussion about equipping the Royal Navy with water tube boilers, particularly of the Belleville type. After its re-boilering, the ship served in the Channel Fleet or, after renaming, the Atlantic Fleet . In 1905 the Hermes was used as a flagship on the East Indies Station and from 1907 on with the Cape Squadron . In April / May 1913 it was prepared as the Royal Navy's first experimental seaplane carrier. The Hermes was given a starting deck and space to transport up to three seaplanes. Before the Hermes , the French Navy had put a corresponding vehicle into service a year earlier, the Foudre .
The Hermes , which was used to transport aircraft to France at the beginning of the World War, was torpedoed on October 31, 1914 on its march back from Dunkirk by the German submarine U 27 in the Strait of Dover and sank, killing 22 of its crew.
Building history
_6-inch_guns.jpg)
The HMS Hermes , built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan from April 1897 under construction number 401, was launched on April 7, 1898 as the first ship of a new class of 2nd class protected cruisers. So she was the lead ship of the most after built in the same yard as the sister vessel High Flyer designated class three cruisers, which still also in Govan shipyard in London & Glasgow Engineering & Iron Shipbuilding Company built Hyacinth belonged. Occasionally the two somewhat larger ships of the Challenger class that were only launched at the State Shipyards in 1902 are included in the Hermes / Highflyer class.
(see also the history of the Highflyer class )
Mission history
In October 1899 the Hermes was put into service and sent to the North America and West Indies station under Captain FH Henderson . On December 10, 1899, she left Las Palmas for Bermuda . On the way she had considerable problems with the boilers and their supply of feed water. The difficulties with the operation of the boilers almost led to a mutiny on board. It reached Nassau (Bahamas) with the machinery that was no longer operational . Since repairs were not possible there, she was towed to Port Royal, Jamaica by the station's flagship, the Edgar- class cruiser HMS Crescent . There, too, only an order repair was possible. The ship should then go to Bermuda, but had to be partly towed again by the HMS Tribune of the Apollo class . The repairs that were carried out there, which took a few months, allowed them to be returned to Europe. Their misfortune and the problems of other ships with water tube boilers led to considerable discussions in parliament about the usefulness of this type of boiler on the naval warships and their technical personnel.
By 1903, Harland & Wolff in Belfast carried out a major overhaul, during which the previous Belleville boilers were replaced by Babcock boilers developed in the USA . In August 1903 the Hermes again took part in fleet maneuvers and served in the Channel Fleet, where she visited Villagarcia in October 1904 . By renaming the Channel Fleet, she then became a ship of the British Atlantic Fleet.
1905 was the Hermes flagship on the East Indies Station until 1907, where she Rear Admiral Edmund Poë (1849-1921) along with the cruisers HMS Fox , HMS Perseus , HMS Proserpine the gunboats HMS Lapwing and HMS Redbreast , and the paddle steamer HMS Sphinx Service did.
Subsequently, the Hermes , replacing the HMS Crescent of the Edgar class, became the flagship of the Cape Squadron in South Africa from 1907 to 1913, and continued under Rear Admiral Sir Edmund Poë until 1908. At both stations she was replaced as the flagship by her sister ship HMS Hyacinth .
At the beginning of their service, the older cruisers HMS Forte and the HMS Pelorus were also stationed at the Cape of Good Hope Station at the Cape of Good Hope. The Hermes served the rear admirals Sir George Egerton (1852-1940) from 1908 and from 1910 Sir Paul Bush (1855-1930) as the flagship.
Experiments with seaplanes
In May 1913 the Hermes was put back into service as an aircraft mother ship after the Royal Navy had previously carried out tests with launch ramps for aircraft on various liners. During the conversion to the new task, it was given a platform for transporting the aircraft with a canvas hangar at the rear and a launch deck at the front. The seaplanes used use wheel bases to take off and were taken back on board with cranes. During the tests in 1913, mostly two seaplanes were carried.
The Hermes received the Short S. 64 / Admiralty Type 81 , a double-decker with folding wings (Short Folder) with a 160 hp (119 kW) Gnome Double Lambda two-row rotary engine, delivered by Short Brothers on July 17, 1913 . This was used by Hermes during the maneuvers in 1913 and reported the positions of the ships sighted by radio during reconnaissance flights. The first two successful reconnaissance flights were carried out on July 21, 1913. On July 24th, the No. 81 despite heavy swell, but the flight had to be canceled after about half an hour due to thick fog. The landing succeeded differently than two days later, when the landing also suffered damage in heavy seas, but this could be repaired on board the Hermes so that the machine was ready for use again the following day. An engine failure led to an emergency landing of the 81 on August 1st in the North Sea about 50 miles from Great Yarmouth . The damaged aircraft was recovered from the German timber freighter Clara Mennig (1685 BRT, built in 1908) and taken back to the Hermes . This had been in radio contact with the machine until shortly before the damage and after its demolition dispatched the destroyer HMS Mermaid to the presumed site of the accident with an accuracy of two miles. The pilot of the machine was Charles Rumney Samson , one of the first naval pilots who later organized the first flight of a bomber squadron with Fairey III from Cairo to Cape Town with the Royal Air Force .
The results of the tests were used for the construction of the HMS Ark Royal , which was purchased as a hull in May 1914 and was the first British seaplane carrier to be completed. The attempts of the Hermes ended in December 1913, she was again cruiser, decommissioned and reassigned to the reserve.
Use and loss in the First World War
At the beginning of the First World War , the Hermes was again converted into an aircraft mother ship and therefore only put into service on August 31, 1914. It was subordinated to the Nore Command and used to transport aircraft to France. On October 30th, the Hermes reached Dunkirk with a cargo of seaplanes . The next morning the Hermes ran for the return journey under Captain Charles Lambe (1875-1953, later Air Vice-Marshal of the Royal Air Force ) and was then called back because a German submarine had been observed in the area. Before the HMS Hermes could obey this order, she was torpedoed by U 27 under Lieutenant Bernd Wegener in front of the Ruylingen Bank in the Strait of Dover and sank, killing twenty-two seamen.
U 27 was caused by the first sinking of a submarine, E 3 , by a submarine on October 18, 1914 and by its own sinking by the Baralong submarine trap on August 19, 1915, in which the entire crew died , known.
wreck
The wreck of the HMS Hermes lies with the keel up at about 30 meters (100 feet) depth at the position 51 ° 6 ′ N , 1 ° 50 ′ E .
Individual evidence
- ^ The London & Glasgow shipyard in Govan was founded in 1912 by Harland & Wolff Ltd. accepted
- ↑ Unclear whether this was possible with your own strength
- ^ Reply of the Admiralty of May 24, 1900 to the House of Commons
- ↑ both gunboats of the Redbreast class (1890) , 805 ts
- ↑ HMS Sphinx (1886), 1130 ts
- ↑ HMS Forte (1893) of the Astraea class , 4360 ts
- ^ Barnes, p. 92
- ↑ Bruce Flight December 14, 1956, p. 925
- ↑ Wrecksite HMS Hermes
literature
- JJ Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy: the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy. Chatham, London 1969/2006, ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8 .
- Randal Gray (Ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1985, ISBN 0-87021-907-3 .
- Paul G. Halpern: A naval history of World War I. Routledge, London 1995, ISBN 1-85728-498-4 .
- Bodo Herzog: 60 years of German submarines 1906–1966. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1968.
Web links
- Clydebuilt HMS Hermes
- HMS Highflyer extracted from Jane's Fighting Ships © for 1919
- Highflyer class in World War I.
- History of HMS Hermes
- HMS Hermes
- Experimental seaplane carrier Hermes
- Wrecksite HMS Hermes († 1914)
- HMS Hermes , pictures of the Hermes during commissioning, as a seaplane carrier and sinking