The ''Sturgeon''-class destroyers served with the
Royal Navy from 1894; three were built by the
Vickers yard and differed from other similar ships in having their mast stepped before the first funnel. They had
Blechynden boiler
There have been a vast number of designs of steam boiler, particularly towards the end of the 19th century when the technology was evolving rapidly. A great many of these took the names of their originators or primary manufacturers, rather than a m ...
s which gave them and . They were armed with one twelve pounder and two torpedo tubes. They carried a complement of 53 officers and men.
Construction and design
On 8 November 1893, 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 an order with the Naval Construction and Armament Company of
Barrow-in-Furness (later to become part of
Vickers) for three "Twenty-Seven Knotter" destroyers as part of the 1893–1894 construction programme for the
Royal Navy,
[Lyon 2001, p. 69.] with in total, 36 destroyers being ordered from various shipbuilders for this programme.
[Lyon 2001, p. 19.]
The Admiralty only laid down a series of broad requirements for the destroyers, leaving detailed design to the ships' builders. The requirements included a trial speed of , a "turtleback"
forecastle and a standard armament of a
QF 12 pounder 12 cwt ( calibre) gun on a platform on the ship's
conning tower
A conning tower is a raised platform on a ship or submarine, often armored, from which an officer in charge can conn the vessel, controlling movements of the ship by giving orders to those responsible for the ship's engine, rudder, lines, and gro ...
(in practice the platform was also used as the ship's bridge), with a secondary armament of five 6-pounder guns, and two
18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes.
[Lyon 2001, p. 20.][Lyon 2001, pp. 98–99.][Friedman 2009, p. 40.]
The Naval Construction and Armament Company produced a design with a length of
overall 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 was light and deep load.
Three funnels were fitted, with the foremast between the ship's bridge and the first funnel.
[Friedman 2009, p. 50.][Manning 1961, p. 38.] Four Blechyndnen
water-tube boilers fed steam at to two three-cylinder
triple expansion steam engines rated at .
[''The Engineer'' 11 October 1895, p. 365.] 60 tons of coal were carried,
[Brassey 1902, p. 274.] giving a range of at a speed of .
[Friedman 2009, p. 291.] The ship's crew was 53 officers and men.
All three ships had been sold for scrapping before 1913 when the Admiralty re-classed the surviving 27-knotter destroyers as
A Class destroyers.
See also
*
A-class destroyer (1913)
Ships
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References
Notes
Bibliography
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{{A class destroyer (1913)
Destroyer classes
Ship classes of the Royal Navy