HMS ''Hero'' was the second and final ''Conqueror''-class

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

. She was an

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who served in the Victorian

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. The ''Conqueror''-class ships were designed to be improved versions of with a

ram Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

as their main armament. It was assumed by the

Board of Admiralty The Board of Admiralty (1628–1964) was established in 1628 when Charles I put the office of Lord High Admiral into commission. As that position was not always occupied, the purpose was to enable management of the day-to-day operational requi ...

and within Naval Architecture circles, that the supremacy of armour over artillery would allow such a ship to ram an enemy vessel without being seriously damaged by enemy gunfire. This assumption was never tested in action.

Armament

The ship carried two big guns in a

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

placed on the

foredeck The forecastle ( ; contracted as fo'c'sle or fo'c's'le) is the upper deck of a sailing ship forward of the foremast, or, historically, the forward part of a ship with the sailors' living quarters. Related to the latter meaning is the phrase " be ...

. Gunfire over the bow was found to cause serious blast damage to the deck and its structures, while firing abaft the

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

caused blast damage to the

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

and superstructure. The guns were limited to a firing arc of some 45° on either side; as they had been installed with the intention of engaging an enemy on the beam who had evaded a ramming attack, this limit was not seen as serious. Six

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s for the launching of

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...

es were mounted; they were carried in the

aft "Aft", in nautical terminology, is an adjective or adverb meaning towards the stern (rear) of the ship, aircraft or spacecraft, when the frame of reference is within the ship, headed at the fore. For example, "Able Seaman Smith; lie aft!" or "Wh ...

er part of the superstructure and were intended to supplement the ram. The smaller guns were for defence against small craft, against whom the main armament could not be easily or economically employed. By the time she was launched, ramming had been discarded, leaving her and her sister exposed as perhaps the two most useless turret-armed battleships ever built.

Service history

She was commissioned at Portsmouth in May 1888 as tender to the gunnery school ''Excellent''. She remained there until February 1905, when she passed into Dockyard Reserve. She took part in the manoevres of 1888-1891, but saw no other active service. Commander Francis Alan Richard Bowles was appointed in command on 6 February 1900, and was succeeded by Commander George Bowes Hutton who was appointed in command on 6 March 1902. In March 1900 she completed a series of

anchor An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ἄγ ...

trials, where stockless anchors were tested successfully against anchors with stocks. In November 1907, she was made a target ship and was sunk off the Kentish Knock on 18 February 1908.

Popular culture

Player's Navy Cut Navy Cut Tobacco is a defunct brand of cigarettes, originally manufactured by Imperial Brands – formerly John Player & Sons – in Nottingham, England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with ...

'' cigarette packages used an illustration of a sailor with a warship in the background. The sailor's cap band reads "Hero"; this does not imply any connection with HMS ''Hero'', but just suggests that all Royal Navy sailors were heroes. (See the accompanying image.) Players Navy Cigarettes

Citations

References

*Oscar Parkes, ''British Battleships'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hero (1885) Conqueror-class monitors Ships built in Chatham 1885 ships Victorian-era battleships of the United Kingdom Shipwrecks in the North Sea Ships sunk as targets Maritime incidents in 1908