HMS ''Elgin'' was a
Hunt-class minesweeper of the ''Aberdare''
sub-class built for the
Royal Navy during
World War I. She was not finished in time to participate in the First World War. A
mine
Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to:
Extraction or digging
* Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging
*Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine
Grammar
*Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun
...
badly damaged her in 1944; she was sold for scrap in 1945.
Design and description
The ''Aberdare'' sub-class were enlarged versions of the original Hunt-class ships and carried more powerful armament. The ships displaced at normal load. They had a
length between perpendiculars of ,
[ and measured ]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 ...
. The ''Aberdare''s had 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 . The ships' complement consisted of 74 officers and ratings.[Gardiner & Gray, p. 98]
The ships had two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, using steam provided by two Yarrow boilers. The engines produced a total of and gave a maximum speed of . They carried a maximum of of coal[ which gave them a range of at .][Cocker, p. 76]
The ''Aberdare'' sub-class was armed with a quick-firing (QF) gun forward of the bridge and a QF twelve-pounder (76.2 mm) anti-aircraft gun
Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...
aft.[ Some ships were fitted with six- or three-pounder guns in lieu of the twelve-pounder.][
]
Construction and career
HMS ''Elgin'' was built by the William Simons & Company
William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conques ...
at their shipyard
A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
in Renfrew
Renfrew (; sco, Renfrew; gd, Rinn Friù) is a town west of Glasgow in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. It is the historic county town of Renfrewshire. Called the "Cradle of the Royal Stewarts" for its early link with Scotland's former ...
. She was originally to be named ''Troon'', but was renamed before launch to avoid possible misunderstandings of having vessels named after coastal locations. On 4 May 1944, ''Elgin'' was nine miles east of the Isle of Portland, when she triggered an acoustic mine that damaged her severely. She was towed to Portsmouth where she was scrapped in 1945.
See also
*Elgin, Moray
Elgin (; sco, Ailgin; gd, Eilginn, ) is a town (former cathedral city) and formerly a Royal Burgh in Moray, Scotland. It is the administrative and commercial centre for Moray. The town originated to the south of the River Lossie on the higher gr ...
, Scotland
Notes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Elgin (J39)
Hunt-class minesweepers (1916)
1919 ships
Maritime incidents in May 1944