The ''Banshee'' class was a class of three
torpedo boat destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in 1 ...
s that served with the
Royal Navy into the early part of the Twentieth century.
Under the 1893–1894 Naval Programme, the
British Admiralty
The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of it ...
placed orders for 36 torpedo-boat destroyers, all to be capable of , the "27-knotters", as a follow-on to the six prototype "26-knotters" ordered in the previous 1892–1893 Estimates. As was typical for torpedo craft at the time, the Admiralty left detailed design to the builders, laying down only broad requirements.
[Chesneau and Kolesnik 1979, p. 87.][Manning 1961, p. 39.]
The three ships,
''Banshee'',
''Contest'' and
''Dragon'' were all ordered on 7 February 1894 to be built by
Laird at
Birkenhead. Displacing 290 tons, they carried one
12-pounder gun 12-pounder gun or 12-pdr, usually denotes a gun which fired a projectile of approximately 12 pounds.
Guns of this type include:
*12-pounder long gun, the naval muzzle-loader of the Age of Sail
*Canon de 12 de Vallière, French cannon of 1732
*Cano ...
and five
6-pounder guns, plus two 18-inch
torpedo tubes in a trainable twin deck mounting. With they made a speed of 27 knots (50 km/h).
The ships had a length of , beam and draught of and carried a complement of 2 officers and 51 men. ''Banshee'' and ''Dragon'' were deployed to the Mediterranean in 1896 and remained there for the rest of their service lives, until coming home in 1911 to be paid off; ''Contest'' spent her whole service life in Home waters.
Along with the similar
''Ferret''-class torpedo boat destroyers built under the 1892-1893 Programme, they were all disposed of in 1911/1912.
Ships
All three were built by Laird Brothers at Birkenhead (which was to become
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, ...
& Co. in 1903)
See also
*
A-class destroyer (1913)
Bibliography
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References
{{A class destroyer (1913)
Destroyer classes
Ship classes of the Royal Navy