HMS Hyacinth (1898)
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|---|---|
 HMS Hyacinth |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Protected cruiser |
| units | 3 |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | January 1897 |
| Launch | October 27, 1898 |
| delivery | . September 1900 |
| period of service |
1900-1919 |
| Whereabouts | Sold for demolition October 11, 1923 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement | |
| length |
pp: 106.75 m (350 ft) |
| width |
16.47 m (54 ft) |
| Draft |
6.7 m (22 ft) |
| crew |
450 men |
| drive |
|
| speed |
20 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Coal supply |
500 ts (1120 ts max.) |
| Armor | |
| deck |
76 mm (3 in) |
| Machine cover |
127 mm (5 in) |
| Command tower |
152 mm (6 in) |
The protected cruiser HMS Hyacinth was one of the three Highflyer-class cruisers of the Royal Navy . The Hyacinth had been the flagship of the station on the Cape of Good Hope since 1913, making it the only active cruiser of the class at the start of the war. He was used in the occupation of the German colonies in Southwest Africa and East Africa . The cruiser remained on the South African station until the end of the war.
Building history
The keel-laying of the HMS Hyacinth took place in January 1897 as the first ship of the class at the London & Glasgow Engineering and Iron Shipbuilding Company in Govan under hull number 292, while the sister ships HMS Hermes and HMS Highflyer were both built by Fairfield , also in Govan. It was the fourth construction of a cruiser for the Royal Navy for the London & Glasgow shipyard. Most recently she had built the cruisers HMS Dido and HMS Isis of the previous Eclipse class . The shipyard was founded in 1912 by the Northern Irish shipyard Harland & Wolff Ltd. bought up, which built a Scottish shipyard there using other properties.
The Hyacinth was launched on October 27, 1898 and was not put into service until September 1900 as the last ship of the class, although she was the first ship to be started. The actual type ship of the class, to which the two somewhat larger ships of the Challenger class , which were only launched in 1902 at the state shipyards, are occasionally assigned , is the Hermes .
see also the
construction history of the Highflyer class .
Mission history
The HMS Hyacinth was initially made available to the "boiler committee" of parliament to prove the suitability of water-tube boilers on warships, which has been seriously doubted by some parliamentarians since the unsuccessful transfer of the sister ship HMS Hermes to the West Indies in early 1900.
Pre-war missions
In 1903, the HMS Hyacinth replaced her sister ship Highflyer as the flagship at the East Indies Station in Bombay . Commanded by Captain the Hon. Horace Hood she supported in 1904 as the flagship of a squadron of three ships of Rear Admiral George Atkinson-Willes (1847-1921) a new 4th campaign in Somaliland . On April 20, she arrived with the cruiser HMS Fox at the mouth of the Gulluli, today Nugaal , and put a 500-man landing corps under Captain Hood of seamen and 125 men of the Royal Hampshire Regiment ashore. The landing forces captured Fort Illig, now Eyl , and drove the rebels from the village and the coast. The British destroyed the fort and then withdrew. The landing forces mourned three dead and eleven wounded, the rebels had lost over 60 men.
In addition to the Hyacinth and the Fox , the cruiser HMS Perseus , the sloop HMS Merlin and the two old torpedo cruisers HMS Mohawk and HMS Porpoise of the Archer class were used off the Somali coast. In November she went to Singapore for a meeting of British commanders in the east. The commander of China Station had also appeared with his flagship HMS Glory and the commander of Australia Station with his flagship HMS Euryalus . As the flagship of the East India Station, the Hyacinth was replaced by her sister ship Hermes and was in the reserve in Devonport in 1906, only to be relocated to the East India Station in 1907, where she was under Captain JD Dick and as the flagship of Rear Admiral EJW Slade from 1909 also several times against the arms trade in the Persian Gulf together with other ships of the East Indian Station, such as the old cruiser HMS Philomel .
In 1913 the Hyacinth moved via England to the South African 'Cape station', where it replaced its sister ship Hermes , which had been in service there since 1907, as the flagship.
War effort
The British Cape Squadron under Rear Admiral Herbert Goodenough King-Hall tried to use the cruisers HMS Hyacinth , HMS Astraea and HMS Pegasus to monitor the small cruiser SMS Koenigsberg stationed in Dar es Salaam because of the threatened outbreak of war. On July 31, 1914, as instructed, he left the port of the capital of the German colony to wage cruiser warfare in the Indian Ocean . The German cruiser evaded the squadron that was crossing in front of the harbor by making a few turns and at high speed apparently to the south. Hyacinth and Königsberg passed each other on opposite course at a distance of 600 m. In fact, however, the Königsberg went north to the main shipping routes on the Arabian coast at the beginning of the First World War .
In September, the Hyacinth accompanied the troop transports that were supposed to bring the regular troops back to Great Britain from the Cape of Good Hope. In the northern Atlantic, this task was taken over by the sister ship Highflyer . In October, the Hyacinth was ordered back to Cape to help against insurgent Boers . When the news of the naval battle reached Coronel , she was in Cape Town . The squadron there under Rear Admiral King-Hall was reinforced by the armored cruiser HMS Minotaur - as a flagship - and HMS Defense in order to be able to withstand the German cruiser squadron if necessary . After the sea battle in the Falkland Islands and the sinking of Spee's squadron, the two armored cruisers were withdrawn and the admiral switched back to the Hyacinth . At the beginning of 1915 he then switched to the liner HMS Goliath , which was overtaken in Simonstown , South Africa, after a mission off East Africa from December 1914 to February 1915 .
The Hyacinth supported from January 1915. invasion of German South West Africa . But she soon switched to the other side of Africa to take part in the blockade of the Königsberg in the Rufiji Delta. On March 7, the flagship Goliath arrived with the commander of the Cape Squadron, Vice Admiral King-Hall, in front of the Rufiji estuary, where the attacks on the Königsberg blocked there were to 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 back to the cruiser Hyacinth and the liner left East Africa on April 1st.
In April it became clear that the Germans were expecting a supplier for their troops. They chose the former British ship Rubens (3587 GRT, built in 1906) as their supplier . The ship had left Germany as Sperrbrecher A on February 18, 1915 under the command of Carl Christiansen and passed the Cape of Good Hope on March 22. Rubens had been in radio communication with Königsberg since April 3 . It became clear that she could not supply the cruiser at sea because of the distribution of the cargo. She first went to the Aldabra atoll and then tried to reach Tanga . Admiral King-Hall decided to intercept the Rubens with his flagship Hyacinth . On April 14th, the British sighted and pursued the Rubens , with the Hyacinth's starboard engine collapsing. The cruiser turned briefly on the opposite course. The blockade breaker escaped into Mansa Bay and, as prepared, agglomerated in the shallow water near the coast. The Hyacinth set the Rubens on fire, but an attempt to send a control team on board was prevented by the protection force with machine gun fire . The bulk of their supplies were in the flooded hold of the Rubens and were recovered after the Hyacinth had withdrawn.
The Hyacinth remained on the South African station and off East Africa . In January 1917, the cruiser served as the base for a small unit of the Royal Naval Air Service . On January 6, Squadron Leader Edwin Moon and Commander Richard Bridgeman were forced to make an emergency landing in the Rufiji Delta as observers on a reconnaissance flight due to engine failure. Moon and Bridgeman wandered the delta for days and then tried to escape across sea on a raft. Bridgeman died in the sun, Moon was driven back to shore and was taken prisoner. Moon received an additional clasp in addition to his Distinguished Service Order for "his extraordinary courage to save the life of his companion," a silver medal from the Royal Humane Society for his efforts to save Bridgeman's life, and the Knight's Cross of the French Legion of Honor . Bridgeman's body was found and buried in the Dar es Salaam military cemetery.
After the war ended, the Hyacinth moved back home and was decommissioned in August 1919. There it was sold to Swansea for demolition on October 11, 1923 .
literature
- RA Burt: British Battleships 1889-1904 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1988, ISBN 0-87021-061-0 .
- James J. Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy : the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy . Chatham, London 2006, ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8 .
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships . Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Jane's Fighting Ships of World War One (1919). Jane's Publishing Company.
- Richard K. Lochner: Battle in the Rufiji Delta . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-453-02420-6 .
Web links
- The High Flyer class in World War I (Engl.)
- History of High Flyer class (Engl.)
- History of HMS Hyacinth (Engl.)
- HMS Hyacinth (engl.)
- The Hermes-class (Engl.)
- The Hyacinth built on the Clyde
Individual evidence
- ^ Parliamentary debates from 1900 to 1903
- ↑ Fox (1893), 4360ts, see Astraea class
- ↑ Perseus (1897), 2135 ts, Pelorus class, see HMS Pegasus (1897)
- ^ Merlin (1901), 1070 ts, Cadmus class
- ^ Mohawk (1886), 1770 ts, Archer class
- ^ Porpoise (1886), 1770 ts, Archer class
- ^ Philomel (1890), 2575 ts, Pearl class
- ↑ Lochner, p. 36
- ↑ Burt, p. 158
- ↑ Lochner p. 209ff
- ↑ Lochner, p. 215ff
- ↑ Supplement to the London Gazette, March 16, 1918 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 16, 2011
- ↑ Edwin Rowland Moon 1886–1920 ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2010 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. February 19, 2011
- ↑ Casualty Details: Bridgeman, Richard Orlando Beaconsfield February 19, 2011
