HMS Philomel (1890)
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.jpg) HMS Philomel in New Zealand service |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Protected cruiser |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | 1889 |
| Launch | August 28, 1890 |
| Commissioning | November 10, 1892 |
| Whereabouts | 1949 hull sunk |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
2,575 tn.l. |
| length |
overall: 84.8 m (278 ft ) |
| width |
12.5 m (41 ft) |
| Draft |
4.7 m (15.5 ft) |
| crew |
220 men |
| drive |
4 double-ended cylinder boilers |
| speed |
18 kn , with fan 19 kn |
| Armament |
8 × rapid fire guns 4.7 inches (120 mm) |
| Coal supply |
300 tn.l., maximum 442 tn.l. |
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Armor Decks Gun Shields Command Tower |
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The sixth HMS Philomel the Royal Navy was a protected cruiser 3rd class. It was one of four replicas of the Pearl class developed for the Australian Auxiliary Squadron . Until 1913 she served in the Royal Navy on various foreign stations. In 1913 she was the last of the nine cruisers in this class to be in active fleet service. The Philomel was then sold to New Zealand , where she was supposed to start building her own fleet as a seagoing training ship.
The First World War , which broke out shortly after their commissioning for this task , brought other tasks. In August 1914 she took part in the occupation of the German colony of Samoa and was then sent to the Middle East. In February 1915 she supported landings in southern Turkey, then relocated to the Red Sea and finally to the Persian Gulf. She was the first New Zealand warship in service. In 1917 she was released to New Zealand, where she was disarmed. From 1922 it was anchored in the naval base in Auckland and designated the training center and the depot of the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, but was not finally deleted until 1947.
Building history
In 1888 construction contracts for five cruisers of the Pearl class had been given to the Armstrong shipyard in Elswick and the shipyard of J. & G. Thomson in Clydebank , which were to form the Australian Auxiliary Squadron decided in 1887 . Of these 3rd class cruisers, which Sir William White had designed, a total of nine ships were built, as four more cruisers were built at state shipyards under the British Naval Act of 1889 . The Philomel was the last cruiser in the class and the second ship to be built by the Devonport naval shipyard .
The ships of the Pearl class displaced 2575 tn.l and reached a speed of 19 knots (kn) with artificial pull . They were considered an improved version of the Archer- class torpedo cruisers . The main armament with eight 12.0 cm guns was characterized only by the use of rapid-fire guns, but was hardly suitable for achieving much success in the fight against warships. The four ships of the class built at the state shipyards were started in 1889 and came into service until December 1892.
Mission history
The Philomel put into service on November 10, 1891 under Captain Charles Campbell with a crew of 221 for the Cape of Good Hope Station .
Operations on African coasts
It supported smaller ground operations in East Africa, so in April 1893 in Lamu and in the Sultanate of Witu , and in 1896 was involved in what was supposedly the shortest war in world history between Zanzibar and Great Britain . It took place on August 27, 1896 at 9 a.m. and lasted 38 minutes. After the death of their sultan Hâmid ibn Thuwainî , a new sultan had been elected in Zanzibar, which the British did not agree with. They wanted to get a nephew of the deceased acceptable to them. The Philomel was already in the port of Zanzibar two days earlier with the gunboat HMS Trush when the Sultan died unexpectedly and his nephew Chalid ibn Barghasch took power. The British sent another gunboat into port with the HMS Sparrow and put marines ashore. The following day, the Archer- class cruiser HMS Racoon and the station's flagship, the Edgar- class cruiser HMS St. George under Rear Admiral Harry Rawson, and the British demanded the Khalid's withdrawal until the next Tomorrow 9:00 a.m. At 9:02 a.m., Racoon , Thrush, and Sparrow opened fire on the palace and met immediately. The wooden yacht Glasgow , which was a British gift to the Sultan, tried to resist and was immediately sunk by the St. George , and two steam boats were also destroyed. When the palace burned at 9:40 a.m., no enemy artillery was fired and the Sultan's flag was no longer fluttering over the palace, the British ended the fire after around 500 shots from their naval guns, over 4,000 shots from their machine guns and around 1,000 rifle shots. The bombardment left around 300 dead and 200 injured. There was only one wounded man on the British side. The British employed sailors from St. George and Philomel to put out the fires and appointed the sultan's nephew and Khalid's, Hammûd ibn Muhammad , as their sultan with more restricted rights, who would be in England after his death raised son followed. The rebellious Khalid was able to flee to the German consulate and was brought to German East Africa by the German cruiser SMS Seeadler .
At the beginning of the following year 1897, the Philomel took part in the British punitive expedition against the Kingdom of Benin in Nigeria. Conflicts with the kingdom had been going on for a long time and the British planned to break the kingdom's power. The use of the Navy was the so-called Benin Massacre triggered as the reigning British Consul James Robert Phillips (RN) End 1896 tried a peaceful educating location in the kingdom of Benin, but by the Border Guard of Benin close to the January 4, 1897 Gwato was attacked . Only two officers of the unarmed expedition were able to escape.
The commander of the competent Cape of Good Hope Station, Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, ordered the related vessels of his station in Brass in the Niger estuary to focus where the gunboat HMS Widgeon of Fernando Póo first arrived. It was followed by the small cruisers of the squadron, the sister ships HMS Phoebe , which was already off West Africa, and Philomel . On January 12, 1897, Rawson was ordered by the Admiralty to launch a massive punitive expedition that would lead to the capture of the king and the destruction of the city of Benin . So he marched to the mouth of the Niger with his flagship St. George and also pulled in the gunboat HMS Magpie and the paddle steamer HMS Alecto . For this purpose, the cruisers HMS Theseus and HMS Forte were ordered from the Mediterranean and the transport / hospital ship Malacca and the small cruiser HMS Barrosa to Nigeria from home .
On February 9, 1897, the invasion of the kingdom began in three columns and a total of 1,200 soldiers, to which 800 porters came. The commanders had orders to burn down every village in Benin. After ten days, two groups fought their way to the city of Benin, which was captured, set on fire and looted. The commander of the Philomel commanded the marching group that was supposed to find the place of the attack and buried the remains. Some of the art of Benin, especially the bronzes, was destroyed in the process, and over 2,000 art objects were confiscated by the Admiralty and used to finance the campaign. This expected “return” was also always emphasized by the victim of the massacre, Phillips, in his various plans for invasion. The campaign cost the British only 10 dead and 32 injured. However, many sailors fell ill with the fever after they returned to the ships. The Malacca , used as a transport and hospital ship , also had three nurses on board for the first time. The King of Benin , Ovonramwen , was later captured and held until his death in 1914.
After the mission in Benin, the Philomel went to England for overhaul, but returned to South Africa in 1899. During the Second Boer War , she parked marines, sailors and two artillery pieces on land. The latter stood out especially at Colenso before Ladysmith could be freed. The commander of the Philomel , Captain Bearcroft, temporarily commanded a naval brigade under Roberts . On March 22, 1902, the returned Philomel was then decommissioned in Devonport. Then she was in reserve in the Firth of Forth for five years .
After an overhaul, the Philomel was put back into service on February 1, 1908 for the Red Sea Division of the Mediterranean Fleet . When the Great Earthquake struck Messina at the end of the year , the cruiser was in Malta . Within a few hours he ran out with doctors and nurses to set up an emergency hospital in Reggio Calabria . After that, she actively participated in the evacuation of rescued people from Messina .
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In early 1909, the cruiser went back to the Red Sea and as far as Aden , where she took the Royal West Surreys and other troops on board that were supposed to suppress the unrest in Somaliland . From January 19, the Philomel supported landings at Berbera and Lashkori , surrendered their own soldiers ashore and monitored the coast to prevent a possible supply of weapons. Before her, the HMS Fox and HMS Proserpine had been in action there. Philomel remained on the Somaliland mission until the end of June and was supported by HMS Diana in February and March , then by HMS Barham until mid-May . With a largely swapped crew, the Philomel was transferred to the East Indies Station in 1909 , where it was last used again with the HMS Hyacinth off Somaliland at the beginning of October 1909 and then mainly used against arms smugglers in the Persian Gulf .
In 1913 the Admiralty gave the Philomel to New Zealand as a seagoing training ship to create the core of a New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy. On July 15, 1914, she entered service in Wellington under Captain Percival Hall-Thompson , RN, Naval Advisor to the New Zealand Government.
Used in the World War as a New Zealand ship
The newly commissioned Philomel was with her first recruits on a test drive in Picton on the Marlborough Sounds when the radio message of the impending war reached them. She ran back to Wellington, supplemented the crew by reservists and ran on to Auckland, where she met the station cruisers HMS Psyche and HMS Pyramus . On August 15, the three cruisers with the steamers Moeraki (4,392 BRT, 1902, 14.5 knots) and Monowai (3,433 BRT, 1890, 13 knots) of the Union Steamship Co of New Zealand Ltd and an expeditionary corps of 1,413 people left Auckland, to occupy the German colony of Samoa according to the wishes of the British leadership. The New Zealanders first started at Nouméa , where they met the battle cruiser HMAS Australia , HMAS Melbourne and the French armored cruiser Montcalm , which were supposed to give them security against the German cruiser squadron under Maximilian von Spee , which was also in the South Pacific. The convoy arrived at Apia via Suva on August 30th and the New Zealanders were able to occupy the German colony without resistance. The ships left Samoa immediately. The Philomel visited the King of Tonga in Nukualofa from September 3rd to 7th to inform him about the war. After picking up a German radio signal, she ran back to New Zealand and reached Auckland on September 12th. Two days later the German armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau actually appeared in front of Apia, but expired again when they realized that the port was no longer in German hands. They then attacked Papeete .
As a next task, the Philomel accompanied the ten transporters with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force for Egypt from Wellington to Albany from October 16, together with the cruisers HMS Minotaur , Psyche , Pyramus and the Japanese Ibuki . She left the troop transport on the 28th together with the Pyramus to run to Singapore , from where she accompanied three French transporters to Aden. From there, she monitored the Yemeni coast held by the Turks and used her weapons for the first time on December 9th when she destroyed a cluster of dhows in the port of Mocha . In order to do justice to its tasks, the Philomel should be overhauled in Suez , where it arrived on December 12th. The scope of the necessary work could not be done there, so the overhaul was to be carried out in Malta.
Fears of a Turkish attack on the Suez Canal led to the temporary stay in Suez. On December 24, the cruiser continued its voyage and was the only warship accompanying nine large transporters from Port Said to Malta from December 25, 1914 . In Malta she was the only warship flying the British flag; the port was filled with French ships that organized the sealing off of the Adriatic from there . On January 29, 1915, the restored Philomel left Malta for Port Said. It should now be used in the eastern Mediterranean. After agents and reconnaissance officers were taken up in Cyprus , she reached İskenderun on February 5 , in particular to organize raids on the railroad. On February 8, 1915, a 17-man landing party got into a skirmish with Turkish troops, in which three seamen were killed and three others were wounded. They were the first to fall New Zealanders in World War I. The Philomel was replaced by the newly arrived armored cruiser HMS Bacchante before Iskendrun (then Alexandretta) and returned to Egypt. She should tow two river cannon boats to Mesopotamia , which failed because both sank after a short time. Despite the loaded equipment for Mesopotamia, the ship was detained in Aden to combat unrest in Somaliland, where the ship had already been in service in 1909. She moved back to Egypt, where the attack by the Senussi from the actually neutral Italian Kyrenaica required security forces on the western Mediterranean coast.
In July 1915 the Philomel moved across the Red Sea to Aden, where the Turks attacked the British base. They deployed a landing corps to defend the city and again had three casualties. After repelling the Turkish attack, the Philomel moved to the Persian Gulf , where it carried out security trips until 1917 and was overtaken twice in Bombay . In early 1917, the cruiser was so worn out that a lengthy and expensive overhaul was necessary. However, this was waived and the Philomel returned to Wellington in April 1917, where it was decommissioned and disarmed. Their cannons were used to arm New Zealand merchant ships.
She then became the depot ship for the minesweepers who were looking for the mines laid by the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Wolf between Three Kings Islands and Farewell Spit .
Final fate of Philomel
The New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy was formed in 1921 when HMS Chatham arrived from England. In 1922 she accompanied the Philomel on her last voyage under her own steam from Wellington to Auckland, where she was anchored in Devonport Dockyard and gave her name to the school facility and the depot. When the Royal New Zealand Navy was formed in 1941 , the old cruiser, which was New Zealand's first warship, was renamed the HMNZS Philomel . On January 16, 1947, it was finally deleted. It was canceled in Coromel , and many souvenirs were also produced. The hull was not worth demolishing, so the rest of the ship was towed and sunk in August 1949.
Individual evidence
- ^ Declaration by the Admiralty in 1888 in the House of Commons
- ↑ The Benin Expedition , PMC 2432878 (free full text)
- ↑ HMS Philomel (Additional Leave)
- ^ New Zealand transport ships
- ^ The Seizure and Occupation of Samoa in The war effort of New Zealand
literature
- James J. Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy. Chatham, London, Supplemented Edition 2006, ISBN 1-86176-281-X .
- Percival Henry Hall-Thompson: The Work of the "Philomel" in The War Effort of New Zealand , Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, Auckland (1923)
- AN Other: HMNZS Philomel: The cradle of the Royal New Zealand Navy in Naval Historical Review , March 1983.
- John Roberts, HC Timewell, Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (eds.): Warships of the World 1860 to 1905 - Volume 1: Great Britain / Germany. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5402-4 .
- Sydney David Walters: The Royal New Zealand Navy: Official History of World War II, Appendix VIII: Record of HMNZS Philomel , Department of Internal Affairs , Wellington (1956)
