Pelayo (ship)
 The Pelayo (around 1890)
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The Pelayo was a ship of the line in the Spanish Navy that entered service in the late 1880s and was scrapped in 1926. The ship, named after the Asturian King Pelayo , was built abroad. After the approval of the Pelayo on November 12, 1884, the building contract was awarded to France . The single ship was laid on January 25, 1886 at the shipyard of the Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée in La Seyne-sur-Mer (a suburb of Toulon ) in the south of France . After being launched on February 5, 1887, it was put into service on June 3, 1888. The first commander of the ship of the line was the later Almirante Pascual Cervera , who became famous in the Spanish-American war , among other things .
Technical details and modifications
The Pelayo was a maximum of 105.12 m long and 20.19 m wide. The draft was normally 7.58 m, fully equipped and with the maximum coal load it could grow to 8.69 m. The ship had two funnels and two battle masts. Although these masts should originally have carried sails with a total area of just under 1,220 square meters , this project was soon discarded due to the too low speed (around 5 kn ) under sail . As early as around 1890, the liner only drove under steam. As a result, the two masts were dismantled , converted into pure battle masts, and from that point on they were only used to carry lighter weapons on the Marshals' platforms .
In terms of design, based on the French ships of the line of the Marceau class , the Pelayo was the most powerful warship in the Spanish Navy after being commissioned . Plans to build a second ship of this type were rejected by the Spanish Navy, on the one hand due to budget problems, and on the other hand because the Spanish fleet command of the three armored cruisers of the Infanta Maria Teresa class , which were built from 1889, is larger Promised benefit in securing the Spanish colonies overseas. It was also found that the Pelayo had too little sea endurance (see machinery) and was hardly usable for oceanic use. Until the construction of the España- class dreadnoughts began (from 1909), the Pelayo was the only battleship and at the same time the largest warship in the Spanish Navy for over 20 years. This fact later earned the ship the nickname El Rey Solitario (English: "The Lonely King").
Armament
The main armament of the Pelayo consisted of two 48-tonne 32 cm L / 37.5 guns Model 1884 of the Hontoria type and two 28 cm L / 35 guns Model 1883 (also of the Hontoria type, with a weight of 32 Tons). Both cases were Canet guns manufactured under license in Spain and modified in terms of caliber from the French armaments company Schneider & Cie. The original caliber was 34 cm (32 cm guns) and 27.4 cm (28 cm guns). While the two 32 cm guns of the Pelayo were each in a tower in front of and aft of the superstructure, the two 28 cm guns were on both sides of the superstructure, for example between the two funnels , in armored swivel beds . With one broadside , three of the four heavy guns could be brought to bear. The cannons housed on both sides of the ship could fire in both the bow and stern direction due to the tumble home design of the hull . While the 28 cm gun could fire a 266 kilogram shell over a maximum distance of almost 10,500 m (the rate of fire was around one shot per minute), the 32 cm gun fired a 400 kg shell around 11,000 m far. However, the rate of fire of these cannons was very low, only about one shot every five minutes.
Immediately after the commissioning, the middle artillery consisted of a 16.2 cm Hontoria gun L / 35 Model 1879 in a hunting position in the bow and twelve 12 cm L / 35 guns Model 1883 in armored gun ports in the battery deck , with six cannons each could fire to one side, together. In 1898 the Pelayo underwent a rebuild, with all 12 cm guns and the 16.2 cm cannon disembarking and replaced by a total of nine 14 cm Hontoria L / 35 Model 1883 guns (eight in the battery deck and one in hunting setup in the bow) were replaced. The lighter armament consisted of five 5.7 cm Hotchkiss cannons and 13 five-barreled 3.7 cm Hotchkiss revolver cannons . Eight of these guns were on the Marsen the two battle towers, the other stood near the bridge and on the aft deck.
In addition, the ship had seven 35.6 cm torpedo tubes of the Whitehead type (model 1882 A-20). One tube was in the stern, three more torpedo tubes were installed on both sides of the ship in the forward third of the ship and could fire at an angle of about 30 degrees in the direction of travel. The maximum range of these torpedoes was around 1,500 m (at 15 kn ). As the Whitehead torpedoes gradually turned out to be obsolete, in 1910 all torpedo tubes were removed and dismantled.
Machine system
The machinery of the Pelayo consisted of 16 coal fired Niclausse - water tube boilers and four vertically installed triple-expansion engines , the two shafts, two bronze propeller, each 5.01 m in diameter were headed. The maximum engine output was 9,600 PSi , with which the ship was able to achieve a top speed of 16.58 kn (around 31 km / h) during test drives in May 1888 . However, since the two 32 cm guns of the main artillery were not on board during these tests and they were also not driven with a full coal load, it can be assumed that the maximum speed achieved later in use will ideally be (estimated) no more than 15.5 kn.
According to the planning specifications, the ship should also have been able to travel 5,000 nautical miles at 12 kn (about 22 km / h) cruising speed (or 7,500 nautical miles at 10 kn) with a maximum coal load of 676 tons . In reality, however, the Pelayo lagged far behind these specifications. Even at a very low and therefore economical cruising speed of 8 knots, distances of more than 3,000 nautical miles could rarely be covered. The fact of the short range was considered one of the most serious shortcomings of the ship.
Armor protection
The armor protection of the Pelayo , which can be classified as a barbed armored ship with regard to the armor scheme , was from the armaments company Schneider & Cie. The so-called Creusot steel used was similar to the American Harvey tank . Although the side armor was up to 450 mm thick, this protection only extended about 60 cm above the waterline when fully loaded , which is why the majority of the side walls of the hull ( apart from the gun ports and the barbeds of the 28 cm guns) was largely unprotected. The guns of the main artillery were in armored barbeds up to 400 mm thick, but were only protected against projectiles falling from above with an 80 mm thick armored hood.
Others
The Pelayo received 1904 as first Spanish warship, almost simultaneously with the protected Kreuzer Extremadura , one of Telefunken produced wireless telegraph .
Working time
After being commissioned in 1888, the Pelayo mostly performed maneuvering and representation tasks in the following years. In 1892, after visiting the port of Piraeus , the ship took part in Genoa to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' departure on his first voyage of discovery to the New World . In 1895 a visit to Germany followed , including the port of Kiel .
In 1897 the decision was made to modernize the Pelayo central artillery . As a result, the ship was docked in December 1897 at the former shipyard ( Compagnie des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée ) in La Seyne-sur-Mer in the south of France . In the course of this modernization, with all 12 cm cannons and the 16.2 cm gun in the bow being removed and replaced by nine 14 cm guns, the masts were also slightly shortened and improved smoke outlets were installed (the amidships across and The navigation bridge running between the chimneys was often enveloped in smoke, which accordingly hindered the ship's command). Before the renovations could be completed, the Spanish-American War broke out in April 1898 .
Used in the Spanish-American war
In order to have the ship ready for action again as quickly as possible, the Pelayo was rebuilt in April 1898 by the 2nd División ( Capitán de Navío José Ferrándiz y Niño ) without the protective shields of the gun ports of the 14 cm cannons having been installed assigned to the established Spanish reserve squadron (under the command of Almirante Manuel de la Cámara ).
This reserve squadron consisted of the Pelayo , the armored cruiser Emperador Carlos V , the outdated coastal armored ship Vitoria , five auxiliary cruisers , an Aviso , three destroyers and several supply and coal ships.
After the devastating defeat of the Spanish Philippine Squadron on May 1, 1898 in the battle of the Bay of Manila against the US Asia Squadron , Cámara's unit set sail from Cádiz on May 14, 1898 , to cross the Suez Canal and then for one Counterattack to the Philippines . After the squadron arrived in Port Said , however, the Egyptian authorities delayed the addition of coal for several weeks , also out of concerns about Egypt's neutrality . After it became clear that Spain had lost the Philippines for good, Cámara's squadron received the order to march back to Spain in early July 1898. After returning, the reserve squadron was disbanded on July 25, 1898. The Pelayo had not fired its guns during the entire war .
Service from 1898 to 1920
After the end of the war and in the following years, the Pelayo mostly served as a representation ship and visited, among others, Toulon (1901) and Lisbon (1904).
Only once, during the Rif War of 1909 , did the ship fire its heavy artillery as part of a combat mission when it fired at positions of insurgent Rif cabyls along the coast of Morocco . This was followed by a longer period of lay in the shipyard in 1910/11.
In the morning hours of November 23, 1912, the Pelayo was on her way from Palma to Maó , the ship under the command of Capitán de Navío Salvador Moreno Eliza ran aground on an underwater rock near Cala Figuera due to a navigation error . The hull was torn open on the port side , roughly between the forward mast and the forward boiler room. The heavily damaged ship was recovered a day later and was then repaired in Cartagena , but was only used as a training and school ship in the following years and until 1920, although the damage could be repaired.
Whereabouts
After the Pelayo had served briefly as an artillery training ship in 1921/22, the ship was finally decommissioned and disarmed in 1923. After the official decommissioning on August 1, 1924 and the towing of the old liner to Rotterdam at the end of 1925, it was scrapped there from April 1926.
literature
- Aguilera A .: Pelayo. Buques de la Armada Espanola . Madrid 1969.
- Chesneau, Roger / Kolesnik, Eugene M. (Eds.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1860 - 1905 . New York 1979.
