HMS Speedy (1893)
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| HMS Speedy | |
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| Overview | |
| Type |
Torpedo gunboat , minesweeper |
| Shipyard |
John I. Thornycroft & Co. , Chiswick , Building No. 281 |
| Keel laying | January 4, 1892 |
| Launch | May 18, 1893 |
| delivery | February 25, 1894 |
| Namesake | english for fast / nimble |
| Whereabouts | Sunk on September 3, 1914 after being hit by a mine |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
810 tn. l. |
| length |
73.81 m over everything, |
| width |
8.23 m |
| Draft |
3.66 m |
| crew |
91 men |
| drive |
4 water tube boilers, |
| speed | |
| Range |
2500 nm at 10 kn |
| Bunker quantity |
100 tn.l., maximum 160 tn.l. |
| Armament |
2 × 120 mm rapid fire cannons |
The sixth HMS Speedy the Royal Navy was a 1894 finished Torpedo - gunboat . The Speedy was ordered from Thornycroft in parallel with the ten boats in the Alarm class , based on a design by the shipyard . The boat received a different machine system with three chimneys. With a displacement of 810 long tons , it was the largest new building at this shipyard to date.
Like many other boats of the class and type, the boat was converted to a minesweeper in 1909 . Speedy was lost in World War I on September 3, 1914. When clearing a mine barrier laid by the German mine-layer Nautilus in front of the Humber , the boat received a mine hit and sank.
Building history
The Alarm class torpedo cannon boats were designed by Sir William White in 1889 as an improved version of the preceding Sharpshooter class . Ten boats were ordered in 1889 according to this official draft. For this purpose, an eleventh boat was ordered from Thornycroft based on the shipyard's own design, which was named Speedy . The boat was also 242 ft (73.81 m) in length , 27 ft (8.23 m) wide and displaced 810 tn. l. like the boats according to the Admiralty draft. The two triple expansion machines acting on two screws also had the same nominal power of 3500 PSi. However, the steam for the machines was generated in four water-tube boilers at the shipyard. These proved to be much more reliable and more efficient than the locomotive boilers of the boats built according to the Admiralty's design.
The Speedy , which was laid down on January 4, 1892 as the last boat of the class, was launched on May 18, 1893, three months after the last boat of the Admiralty Draft. The boat was delivered on February 20, 1894 as the seventh boat in the class. The Speedy had no difficulties reaching the contract speed of up to 18.7 knots (34.6 km / h) and was the only boat in the class to exceed 20 knots with a top speed of 20.5 kn. Like the other boats, the Speedy also had a coal supply of 100 to 160 tons. l. and had a crew of 91 men. The boat was armed with two 4.7-inch (12-cm) rapid-fire cannons , four 3-pounder (47-mm) Hotchkiss cannons and a Gardner machine gun . For this purpose, she had a rigid torpedo tube in the bow and two pivoting single tubes on the sides of the boat. The Speedy was the sixth ship of the Royal Navy to bear this name, first given in 1772. The last time a gunboat of the 16-unit Britomart class bore this name from 1860 to 1889.
Mission history
Like her sister ships, the “torpedo gunboat” came into service at the same time as the first “torpedo boat destroyers”. During the fleet maneuvers in 1894, the Speedy , which had just come into service, was tested against the first "torpedo boat destroyer" HMS Havock . The Havock from 1893 proved to be far superior to the torpedo cannon boat in intercepting torpedo boats and in action against each other. The Havock turned out to be faster and better suited to escort the battle fleet and protect it against enemy torpedo boats. The five boats of the Dryad class under construction at the state shipyards , which continued to have the unreliable boiler system of the previous classes, remained the last torpedo gunboats, while in the following years a large number of other torpedo boat destroyers of the 27 and 30 knotter classes were built.
On June 26, 1897, the Speedy took part in the fleet parade on the Spithead for the 60th anniversary of the throne of the British Queen Victoria . In January 1900 the boat moved to the Mediterranean Fleet , where it replaced the torpedo cannon boat Harrier . In the summer of 1905 the boat was first used in fishery protection. In June 1906 the Speedy collided with a merchant ship and suffered considerable damage. Reconditioned, it served the Home Fleet from 1907 to 1909 . This was followed by the conversion to a mine sweeper , as had already been done on the five boats of the Sharpshooter class and five boats of the Alarm class that were still in fleet service . In 1914, the boat was put into service on March 4th in Sheerness for fisheries protection. The torpedo cannon boats Halcyon , Seagull and Spanker were also deployed for this task .
After the outbreak of the World War, the Fisheries Protection Association formed the core of a coastal protection association stationed in Lowestoft .
The end of the Speedy
The Imperial Navy had started the war against Great Britain with the deployment of the auxiliary miner Queen Luise against the Thames estuary. At the end of August, she sent two formations against the British east coast to hinder British coastal traffic and the use of the British fleet by further offensive mine blocks. The mine steamers Albatross , secured by the small cruiser Stuttgart and the 11th torpedo boat half-flotilla, were deployed against the Tyne estuary and Nautilus , secured by the cruiser Mainz and the 3rd torpedo boat half-flotilla against the Humber estuary, which were there on 25 ./26. August put mine locks in place. Both minefields were recognized on August 26th, as fishing vessels sank on both mine barriers.
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The Speedy was sent to the Humber estuary by Lowestoft with ten rented "drifters" (fishing vessels) to clear the mine barrier that had been set up by the Germans. On September 2nd, the Eyrie (LT1121, 84 BRT, built in 1911) was the first drifter to be lost after a mine hit (6 dead). The following day, the drifter Lindsell (LT322, 88 BRT, built in 1914, 5 dead) also triggered a mine and sank. The Speedy launched her boats to rescue castaways when another mine exploded. The explosion tore off the stern of the gunboat with the rudder and screws. The Speedy fell within one hour to 53 ° 34 '0 " N , 0 ° 10' 0" O . Only one member of her team could not be saved. The minesweepers Spanker the Sharpshooter class brought all saved by Grimsby .
After these and similar losses when attempting to clear the mines off the mouth of the Tynes, the Admiralty decided not to continue clearing the German barriers and only to keep a mine-free route off the coast clear. The German minefields, which were laid relatively far off the coast, were included in the system of defensive British mine locks.
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Renewed uses of names
The Royal Navy received additional units in 1918, 1939 and 1980 that bore the name Speedy :
- On June 1, 1918. Thornycroft was a destroyer of the S class from the stack of the name HMS Speedy (G36) received. The destroyer, which was completed before the end of the First World War on August 14, 1918, came to the "6th Destroyer Flotilla" used in the Mediterranean and sank on September 29, 1922 after a collision with a civilian tug in the Sea of Marmara .
- On April 7, 1939, another HMS Speedy came into service with the Royal Navy. Launched on November 24, 1938 at William Hamilton & Co. in Port Glasgow , this minesweeper sloop with the identification number J 17 of the Halcyon class was sold in 1946 after intensive use in the Second World War and was only scrapped as the Speedon freighter in Aden in 1957 .
- 1980 was the ninth HMS Speedy , a Boeing - Hydrofoil a pilot boat for the planned acquisition of American Pegasus class in the service of the Royal Navy. After abandoning the procurement of further boats, she was sold to Hong Kong for civil use in 1986 .
literature
- Roger Chesneau, Eugène M. Koleśnik, NJM Campbell: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
- Antony Preston: Destroyers , Hamlyn, London a. a. 1977, ISBN 0-600-32955-0 .
Web links
- Alarm Class Torpedo Gunboat (1892) accessed November 24, 2016
- ALARM torpedo gunboats (1893-1894) accessed November 24, 2016
- “CONWAY'S ALL THE WORLD'S FIGHTING SHIPS, 1906–1921”, World War 1 Career Summaries
- Downfall of HMS Speedy
Footnotes
- ^ Preston: Destroyers , p. 12
- ^ Preston, p. 9 ff.
- ^ A b Index of 19th Century Naval Vessels and some of their movements: HMS Speedy, 1893
- ↑ PINK LIST - 18TH JULY 1914
- ↑ PINK LIST - AUGUST 5TH 1914, Minesweeping Gunboats
- ↑ ROYAL NAVY VESSELS LOST and DAMAGED, JUNE to DECEMBER 1914
- ^ Sir Julian S. Corbett: NAVAL OPERATIONS , Volume 1, chapter XI, THE NORTH SEA — AUGUST 16-SEPTEMBER 17