Three ''Handy''-class destroyers served with the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
. , and were all built by Fairfield.
Design and construction
As part of the 1893–1894 Naval Estimates, 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 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, all to be capable of , as a follow-on to the six prototype "26-knotters" ordered in the previous 1892–1893 Estimates. Of the 36 destroyers, three ships (''Handy'', ''Hart'' and ''Hunter'') were ordered from
Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of
Govan
Govan ( ; Cumbric?: ''Gwovan'?''; Scots: ''Gouan''; Scottish Gaelic: ''Baile a' Ghobhainn'') is a district, parish, and former burgh now part of south-west City of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated west of Glasgow city centre, on the south ba ...
,
[Lyon 2001, pp. 19–20.] the first torpedo craft to be built by that shipyard.
[Lyon 2001, p. 87.] As 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.]
Fairfield's design was
long overall
__NOTOC__
Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and ...
and
between perpendiculars, with a
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 ...
of and a
draught of .
Displacement
Displacement may refer to:
Physical sciences
Mathematics and Physics
*Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...
was light and full load,
while the ship's complement was 53 officers and men.
[Manning 1961, p. 36.] Three
Thornycroft boiler
Three-drum boilers are a class of water-tube boiler used to generate steam, typically to power ships. They are compact and of high evaporative power, factors that encourage this use. Other boiler designs may be more efficient, although bulkier, an ...
s fed steam at to two 3-cylinder
triple expansion steam engines rated at and driving two propeller shafts.
Two funnels were fitted.
[Friedman 2009, p. 48.] Armament consisted of a single
QF 12 pounder 12 cwt gun and three 6-pounder guns, with two
18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes.
[Friedman 2009, p. 291.] As a gunboat, one of the torpedo tubes could be removed to accommodate a further two six-pounders.
[Lyon 2001, pp. 98–99.][Friedman 2009, p. 40.]
In September 1913 the Admiralty re-classed all the surviving 27-knotter destroyers as
A Class, although this only applied to ''Handy'' herself as the other two ships had already been sold for scrap in 1912.
See also
*
A-class destroyer (1913)
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
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{{A class destroyer (1913)
Destroyer classes
Ship classes of the Royal Navy