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HMS Swift (1907)
HMS ''Swift'' was a unique destroyer leader designed and built for the Royal Navy prior to World War I, another product of Admiral "Jackie" Fisher's relentless quest for speed. The class was envisioned as a large ocean-going destroyer, capable of both the usual destroyer requirements and of high-speed scouting duties for a major fleet. Design Fisher put his specification to the Director of Naval Construction (DNC) in October 1904 (, 900 tons, ). The DNC replied that it was not strong enough. In 1905 a revised design for from on a 1,400 t hull was pushed through followed by one for 36 knots on 1,350 tons from . Given only four weeks to produce their tender, the major shipyards - Cammell Laird, Thornycrofts, Fairfields, John Brown and Armstrong Whitworth - put forward designs. There were problems meeting the requirements and the high cost of the designs (for example, Armstrong's design was priced at £284,000, compared to £139,881 for , a destroyer of the 1905 ). A final ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cammell Laird
Cammell Laird is a British shipbuilding company. It was formed from the merger of Laird Brothers of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century. The company also built railway rolling stock until 1929, when that side of the business was separated and became part of the Metro-Cammell, Metropolitan-Cammell Carriage & Wagon Company. History Formation from merger of Laird Company and Cammell & Co. The Laird Company was founded by William Laird (shipbuilder), William Laird, who had established the Birkenhead Iron Works in 1824. When he was joined by his son, John Laird (shipbuilder), John Laird in 1828, their first ship was an iron barge. John realised that the techniques of making boilers could be applied to making ships. The company soon became pre-eminent in the manufacture of iron ships and also made major advances in propulsion. In 1860, John Laird was joined in the business by his three sons, renaming the company John Laird, Sons & Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Brown And Company
John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including , , , , , and the '' Queen Elizabeth 2''. At its height, from 1900 to the 1950s, it was one of the most highly regarded, and internationally famous, shipbuilding companies in the world. However thereafter, along with other UK shipbuilders, John Brown's found it increasingly difficult to compete with the emerging shipyards in Eastern Europe and the far East. In 1968 John Brown's merged with other Clydeside shipyards to form the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders consortium, but that collapsed in 1971. The company then withdrew from shipbuilding but its engineering arm remained successful in the manufacture of industrial gas turbines. In 1986 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Trafalgar House, which in 1996 was taken over by Kvaerner. The latter closed the Clydebank engineering works in 2000. Marathon Manufacturing Company bought the C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Viking (1909)
HMS ''Viking'' was a Tribal-class destroyer of the Royal Navy launched in 1909 and sold for scrap in 1919. She was the only destroyer ever to have six funnels. Construction and design HMS ''Viking'' was one of five Tribal-class destroyers ordered as part of the Royal Navy's 1907–08 shipbuilding programme. She was laid down at Palmers' Jarrow shipyard on 11 June 1908 and was launched on 14 September 1909.Friedman 2009, p. 305. The Tribal-class destroyers were to be powered by steam turbines and use oil-fuel rather than coal, and be capable of , but detailed design was left to the builders, which meant that individual ships of the class differed greatly.Gardiner and Gray 1985, p. 72.Friedman 2009, pp. 106–109. ''Viking'' was long overall and between perpendiculars, with a beam of and a draught of . Normal displacement was , with full load displacement .Friedman 2009, p. 294. She had a turtleback forecastle topped by a raised forward gun platform that also carried the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BL 6-inch Mk VII Naval Gun
The BL 6-inch gun Mark VII (and the related Mk VIII) was a British naval gun dating from 1899, which was mounted on a heavy travelling carriage in 1915 for British Army service to become one of the main heavy field guns in the First World War, and also served as one of the main coast defence guns throughout the British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ... until the 1950s. Background The gun superseded the QF 6 inch /40 naval gun, QF six-inch gun of the 1890s, a period during which the Royal Navy had evaluated British ordnance terms#QF, QF technology (i.e. loading propellant charges in brass cartridge cases) for all classes of guns up to to increase rates of fire. British ordnance terms#BL, BL Mk VII returned to loading charges in silk bags after it was det ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extreme Weather
Extreme weather or extreme climate events includes unexpected, unusual, severe, or unseasonal weather; weather at the extremes of the historical distribution—the range that has been seen in the past. Often, extreme events are based on a location's recorded weather history and defined as lying in the most unusual ten percent. The main types of extreme weather include heat waves, cold waves and tropical cyclones. The effects of extreme weather events are seen in rising economic costs, loss of human lives, droughts, floods, landslides and changes in ecosystems. There is evidence to suggest that climate change is increasing the periodicity and intensity of some extreme weather events. Confidence in the attribution of extreme weather and other events to anthropogenic climate change is highest in changes in frequency or magnitude of extreme heat and cold events with some confidence in increases in heavy precipitation and increases in the intensity of droughts. Current evidence and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
U-boat
U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role (commerce raiding) and enforcing a naval blockade against enemy shipping. The primary targets of the U-boat campaigns in both wars were the merchant convoys bringing supplies from Canada and other parts of the British Empire, and from the United States, to the United Kingdom and (during the Second World War) to the Soviet Union and the Allied territories in the Mediterranean. German submarines also destroyed Brazilian merchant ships during World War II, causing Brazil to declare war on both Germany and Italy on 22 August 1942. The term is an anglicised version of the German word ''U-Boot'' , a shortening of ''Unterseeboot'' ('under-sea-boat'), though the German term refers to any submarine. Austro-Hungarian Navy submarines were also kno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protected Cruiser
Protected cruisers, a type of naval cruiser of the late-19th century, gained their description because an armoured deck offered protection for vital machine-spaces from fragments caused by shells exploding above them. Protected cruisers resembled armored cruisers, which had in addition a belt of armour along the sides. Evolution From the late 1850s, navies began to replace their fleets of wooden ships-of-the-line with armoured ironclad warships. However, the frigates and sloops which performed the missions of scouting, commerce raiding and trade protection remained unarmoured. For several decades, it proved difficult to design a ship which had a meaningful amount of protective armour but at the same time maintained the speed and range required of a "cruising warship". The first attempts to do so, armored cruisers like , proved unsatisfactory, generally lacking enough speed for their cruiser role. During the 1870s the increasing power of armour-piercing shells made armou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow viewed from its eastern end in June 2009 Scapa Flow (; ) is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray,S. C. George, ''Jutland to Junkyard'', 1973. South Ronaldsay and Hoy. Its sheltered waters have played an important role in travel, trade and conflict throughout the centuries. Vikings anchored their longships in Scapa Flow more than a thousand years ago. It was the United Kingdom's chief naval base during the First and Second World Wars, but the facility was closed in 1956. Scapa Flow has a shallow sandy bottom not deeper than and most of it is about deep; it is one of the great natural harbours and anchorages of the world, with sufficient space to hold a number of navies. The harbour has an area of and contains just under 1 billion cubic metres of water. Since the scuttling of the German fleet after World War I, its wrecks and their marine habitats form an internationally acclaimed diving lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Fleet
The Grand Fleet was the main battlefleet of the Royal Navy during the First World War. It was established in August 1914 and disbanded in April 1919. Its main base was Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. History Formed in August 1914 from the First Fleet and part of the Second Fleet of the Home Fleets, the Grand Fleet included 25–35 modern capital ships. It was commanded initially by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.Heathcote, p. 130 The 10th Cruiser Squadron carried out the Northern Patrol between the Shetlands and Norway and cruisers from Cromarty and Rosyth operated a second line (and screened the fleet) in enforcing the blockade of Germany. The administrative complications of the distant blockade across the northern exits of the North Sea overwhelmed the capacity of Vice Admiral Francis Miller, the Base Admiral in Chief from 7 August 1914, devolving on the commander in chief, Admiral John Jellicoe. To relieve the administrative burdens on Miller and Jellicoe, the post of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Preston (naval Historian)
Antony Preston (26 February 1938 – 25 December 2004) was an English naval historian and editor, specialising in the area of 19th and 20th-century naval history and warship design. Life Antony Preston was born in 1938 in Salford, Lancashire, the son of the 16th Viscount Gormanston and Miss Julia O'Mahony. After becoming a wartime evacuee, he was educated in South Africa at King Edward VII School, Johannesburg, and the University of Witwatersrand.Publisher's preface, ''The World's Worst Warships'' (Conway Maritime Press 2002) On his return to England he spent some years at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, before becoming Editor of the periodical "Defence". During the 1970s he was employed by a specialist publisher, Conway Maritime Press, as editor of their ''Warship'' annual. He also produced the specialised newsletter ''Navint''. In the early nineties he took over as chief-editor of the magazine ''Naval Forces'' at the German editorial group Mönch. He left to res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Wilson (Royal Navy Officer)
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson, 3rd Baronet, (4 March 1842 – 25 May 1921) was a Royal Navy officer. He served in the Anglo-Egyptian War and then the Mahdist War being awarded the Victoria Cross during the Battle of El Teb in February 1884. He went on to command a battleship, the torpedo school and then another battleship before taking charge of the Experimental Torpedo Squadron. He later commanded the Channel Fleet. He briefly served as First Sea Lord but in that role he "was abrasive, inarticulate, and autocratic" and was really only selected as Admiral Fisher's successor because he was a supporter of Fisher's reforms. Wilson survived for even less time than was intended by the stop-gap nature of his appointment because of his opposition to the establishment of a Naval Staff. Appointed an advisor at the start of World War I, he advocated offensive schemes in the North Sea including the capture of Heligoland and was an early proponent of the development and us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skelmorlie
Skelmorlie is a village in North Ayrshire in the south-west of Scotland. Although it is the northernmost settlement in the council area of North Ayrshire, it is contiguous with Wemyss Bay, which is in Inverclyde. The dividing line is the Kelly Burn, which flows into the Firth of Clyde just south of the Rothesay ferry terminal. Despite their proximity, the two villages have historically been divided, Skelmorlie in Ayrshire and Wemyss Bay in Renfrewshire. Skelmorlie itself is divided into two sections, Lower and Upper Skelmorlie. There is one primary school in the village, with secondary age pupils going to Largs Academy in North Ayrshire. In common with this part of the Clyde foreshore, the rich red sandstone is a prominent feature of the landscape and housing in Skelmorlie. Early Skelmorlie The village is nestled on a plateau and is situated 30-60m above the sea-level. It overlooks the Firth of Clyde, with views across to the beginning of the Scottish Highlands. The outstandi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
