Nymph class
SMS nymph during the naval battle near Jasmund on March 17, 1864
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
.svg){kind=small}
The Nymphe- class was a class of two smooth-deck corvettes that were built for the Prussian Navy in the early 1860s . The two ships were SMS Nymphe and SMS Medusa . The ships were named after characters from Greek mythology and were commissioned in 1861, while the larger covered corvettes of the Arcona class were also being built at the same time . The two ships of the class were laid down almost simultaneously in early 1862 , but work on the Medusa was slowed down due to budget disputes with the Prussian parliament and the desire to gain experience during the construction of the nymph . The corvettes of the class were commissioned in the course of the reconstruction of the Prussian Navy and were to do service in the regular fleet service as well as later on extended mission trips in overseas areas of interest of Prussia and the German Empire .
During the German Wars of Unification , the nymph was also used against the superior navies of the war opponents Denmark and France .
The ships had a battery of ten 36-pounder and six 12-pounder cannons as their main armament and were equipped with a complete set of sailing equipment to supplement the steam engine that was also available on long trips overseas. The ships were in the mid-1870s as training ships used and early 1880s, as now completely out of date, taken out of active service and sold for scrap.
history
The reason for procuring the ships was that, from the mid-1850s, Prussian trade interests expanded into overseas markets in Asia, Central and South America, and the Pacific, where they clashed with the interests of other European powers that Prussian companies were doing overseas Excluded areas of interest.
Accordingly , in parallel with the start of the construction program for armored warships, the High Command of the Navy decided that unarmored steam corvettes were still necessary to protect economic interests overseas. The design work for the covered corvettes of the Arcona class had already begun in 1854. In addition, the Navy decided that smaller ships would be useful too, so the construction department began work on the new design in 1861. In addition, the American Civil War had broken out shortly before and the use of privateers by the Confederates was assessed as a further significant threat to neutral shipping. This supported the need for further lighter warships with long range for Prussia, which in addition to other cruiser tasks could also protect their own merchant ships.
Logically, the ships of the Nymph class were equipped with traditional sailing systems in addition to the technical innovation of steam power. They were given a correspondingly large radius of action and could also be deployed as so-called stationaries to protect Prussian and German interests and for further power projection , often in the sense of a gunboat policy , at naval stations set up overseas .
At the time of the construction and completion of the nymph , however, the conflict over Schleswig-Holstein between Denmark and the German Confederation , to which Prussia also belonged, came to the fore.
Denmark had started expanding its naval forces in 1861, which led Prussia to fear that the small Prussian fleet would be hopelessly inferior to the Danish Navy if the Danes tried to solve the Schleswig-Holstein question by force. In March 1861, the Navy Minister Albrecht von Roon , who was also the Prussian Minister of War , issued a fleet plan that included twelve steam corvettes and other ships as part of a program to prepare for a probable conflict with Denmark. Roon's plans to expand and reform the Prussian army and navy initially sparked a political crisis as the Prussian state parliament refused to provide the necessary funds for Roon's plans. Ultimately, however, the Prussian Navy ordered the ships without the consent of the state parliament on July 23, 1861. Most of the building materials came from Prussia itself, only the machines had to be ordered from other English countries.
In the course of the worsening conflict with Denmark, the type ship Nymphe was activated immediately after its commissioning at the end of 1863 for use in this same conflict and took an active part in the fighting in the subsequent German-Danish war , for example in the sea battle at Jasmund . Also in the French German War was the nymph used to protect the German coast, while completed in April 1863 Medusa was already at that time as a stationary abroad, where they by the French East Asia Squadron in the port of Yokohama has been blocked.
In addition to the war missions of the nymph , both ships were deployed overseas for several years, depending on their intended purpose. The nymph completed the first circumnavigation of the world by a warship of the Imperial Navy during her overseas mission from 1871 to May 1874 . In the mid-1870s, the Nymph- class ships were no longer suitable as warships and were used as ship boy training ships. Medusa retired from this service as early as 1881, the nymph four years later.
general characteristics
The two ships of the Nymph class were 58.54 m and a total of 64.9 m long, 10.2 m wide and had a maximum draft of 4.47 m at the waterline. The design displacement was 1085 tons (t) and up to 1202 t at full load.
The hulls were wooden structures with wooden transverse frames . The outer hull was covered with copper plates to prevent biocorrosion during longer missions overseas, where shipyard facilities were not readily available.
The nominal crew of the ships consisted of 14 officers and 176 men .
Each corvette carried four smaller boats of unspecified types.
drive
Nymphe and Medusa were equipped with a single 2-cylinder ship steam engine that propelled a 2-blade screw propeller with a diameter of 3.64 m. Steam was supplied by two coal-fired boilers made by J. Penn & Sons of Greenwich . The exhaust gases were directed into a single retractable chimney . Each ship had a coal supply of 126 tons.
The ships had a planned speed of 12 knots (22.0 km / h) under steam with an indicated power of 800 PS (790 kW).
The ships were a Dreimast- Vollschiff - rig equipped to supplement their steam engines in their long missions abroad, where coal could be scarce. They achieved a maximum range of 1250 nautical miles (2320 km) at a speed of 12 kn. The ships were steered with a single rudder and, in contrast to most of the other steam corvettes built by Prussia and the German Reich, were considered to be very seaworthy even under sail. Additional ballast in the stern even improved the sailing characteristics.
Armament
The Nymphe- class ships were armed with a battery of ten 36-pounder and six 12-pounder muzzle-loading cannons. In 1869 the armament was changed to initially 17, later to nineteen 12 cm Rk L / 23, for which a total of 1900 rounds of ammunition were carried. The guns had a range of 5900 m. When used as training ships, the armament was reduced to nine ring cannons.
Ships
| ship | Shipyard | Keel laying | Launch | Commissioning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SMS nymph | Royal Shipyard , Gdansk | January 25, 1862 | April 15, 1863 | November 25, 1863 |
| SMS Medusa | February 6, 1862 | October 20, 1864 | April 10, 1867 |
literature
- Gröner, Erich / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats . Bernard & Graefe, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 .
- Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships . Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present . tape 6 . Mundus Verlag, Ratingen, ISBN 3-7822-0237-6 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships - biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , volume 6. Mundus Verlag. Ratingen. ISBN 3-7822-0237-6 page 177 f.