Two ''Swordfish''-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 both built by

Armstrong Whitworth Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major British manufacturing company of the early years of the 20th century. With headquarters in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Armstrong Whitworth built armaments, ships, locomotives, automobiles and a ...

Elswick, Tyne and Wear Elswick ( ) is a district and electoral ward of the city and metropolitan borough of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, 1.9 miles west of the city centre, bordering the River Tyne. Historically in Northumberland, Elswick became part of Newcastle upo ...

launching in 1895. Fitted with Yarrow boilers, they could make 27 knots and were armed with one twelve pounder and two torpedo tubes.

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After ordering six prototype

torpedo boat destroyers 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 ...

from the specialist torpedo boat yards Yarrows,

Thornycroft Thornycroft was an English vehicle manufacturer which built coaches, buses, and trucks from 1896 until 1977. History In 1896, naval engineer John Isaac Thornycroft formed the Thornycroft Steam Carriage and Van Company which built its firs ...

and

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as part of the 1892–1893 shipbuilding 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 ...

planned to buy larger numbers of destroyers under the 1893–1894 programme, with orders being spread over more shipyards.Friedman 2009, pp. 38–42.Lyon 2001, pp. 17–20. The Admiralty specified a number of broad requirement, leaving the detailed design of the ships and their machinery to the builders. The new destroyers were required top reach a trials speed of , with penalty charges imposed if the ship's did not meet the guaranteed speeds or were delivered late. A turtleback

forecastle 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 ...

was to be fitted.Lyon 2001, pp. 19–20. Armament was to vary depending on whether the ship was to be used in the torpedo boat or gunboat role. As a torpedo boat, the planned armament was a single QF 12 pounder 12 cwt ( calibre) gun, together with a secondary gun armament of three 6-pounder guns, and two 18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes. As a gunboat, one of the torpedo tubes could be removed to accommodate a further two six-pounders.Lyon 2001, p. 98. On 8 December 1893, the Admiralty placed an order for a single 27-knotter destroyer (''Swordfish'') with Armstrong Mitchell & Co with an order for a second destroyer (''Spitfire'') following on 7 February 1894.Lyon 2001, p. 86. The ships' machinery was to be supplied by Belliss & Co of

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. Eight Yarrow-type

water-tube boiler A high pressure watertube boiler (also spelled water-tube and water tube) is a type of boiler in which water circulates in tubes heated externally by the fire. Fuel is burned inside the furnace, creating hot gas which boils water in the steam-gene ...

s provided steam at a pressure of , feeding two four-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines and driving two propeller shafts.Lyon 2001 p. 85.''The Engineer'' 23 April 1897, p. 422. Three widely spaced funnels were fitted, with the middle funnel being fatter than the other two as it handled the uptakes from four boilers rather than two as did the other funnels.Friedman 2009, p. 44. Both ships had been sold for scrapping before 1913 when the Admiralty re-classed the surviving 27-knotter destroyers as the A Class.

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* * * * * * * * {{A class destroyer (1913) Destroyer classes Ship classes of the Royal Navy

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