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HMS ''Lightning'' was a 
As originally built, ''Lightning'' had two
torpedo boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of se ...
, built by John Thornycroft at Church Wharf in Chiswick
Chiswick ( ) is a district of west London, England. It contains Hogarth's House, the former residence of the 18th-century English artist William Hogarth; Chiswick House, a neo-Palladian villa regarded as one of the finest in England; and Full ...
for 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 ...
, which entered service in 1876 and was the first seagoing vessel to be armed with self-propelled Whitehead torpedo
The Whitehead torpedo was the first self-propelled or "locomotive" torpedo ever developed. It was perfected in 1866 by Robert Whitehead from a rough design conceived by Giovanni Luppis of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in Fiume. It was driven by a th ...
es. She was later renamed ''Torpedo Boat No. 1''.
As originally built, ''Lightning'' had two drop collar
The Drzewiecki drop collar was an external torpedo launching system most commonly used by the French and Imperial Russian Navies in the first two decades of the 20th century. It was designed by Stefan Drzewiecki, a Polish engineer and inventor ...
s to launch torpedoes; these were replaced in 1879 by a single torpedo tube in the bow. She also carried two reload torpedoes amidships.
The boat appeared at the Naval Review at Spithead of August 1878. The Queen recorded in her Journal that she was impressed by ''the 2 torpedo boats, Vesuvius & Lightning, which rushed about at the rate of 20 Knots an hour''.
The ''Lightning'' spent her life as a tender to the torpedo school HMS ''Vernon'' at Portsmouth and was used for some experiments. She was broken up in 1896.
References
Sources
*Chesneau, Roger and Eugène Kolesnik, ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905''. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1979, {{DEFAULTSORT:Lightning (1877) Torpedo boats of the Royal Navy Ships built in Chiswick 1876 ships Ships built by John I. Thornycroft & Company