The third HMS ''Polyphemus'' was a

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 ...

torpedo ram, serving from 1881 until 1903. A shallow-draft, fast, low-profile vessel, she was designed to penetrate enemy harbours at speed and sink anchored ships. Designed by

Nathaniel Barnaby Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, (25 February 1829 – 16 June 1915) was Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy from 1872 to 1885. Biography Born on 25 February 1829 in Chatham, Barnaby began his career as a naval apprentice at Sheerness in 1843. He won ...

primarily as a

protected Protection is any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces. Protection can be provided to physical objects, including organisms, to systems, and to intangible things like civil and political rights. Although th ...

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 ...

, the

ram Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

was provided very much as secondary armament. It has been suggested that

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

HMS ''Thunder Child'' from his novel ''

The War of the Worlds ''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by ''Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and by ''Cosmopolitan (magazine), Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US. The novel's first appear ...

'' may have been based on this ship, in part because he described ''Thunder Child'' as an ironclad torpedo ram, and ''Polyphemus'' was the only ship of this type which the Royal Navy possessed. However, not being a naval person Wells may have been using the term loosely, assuming that all ram-bowed vessels were called torpedo rams. This is likely given that the fictional ship does not match the other particulars, such as number of funnels, size & weaponry, of HMS ''Polyphemus''.

Design

The

Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong *Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral *Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings * Admiralty, Traf ...

set up the "Torpedo Committee" in 1872 to examine ways in which the newly invented Whitehead

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, s ...

could be launched at sea. The Royal Navy's first purpose-built torpedo launching ship was HMS ''Vesuvius'', which, with a maximum speed of less than 10 knots, was intended to stealthily approach within a few hundred yards of enemy ships at night to launch her torpedoes. Leading on from this, in the mid-1870s Barnaby and his assistant J Dunn proposed a fast cigar-shaped vessel with five submerged torpedo tubes and protected by 2 inches of armour over the deck. The design was modified in late 1875 into a larger vessel equipped with a ram. Early in 1876 the design was modified again into a unarmoured torpedo ram with a top speed of 17 knots. Later the design was modified yet again to have armour added to the exposed steel deck. The ship was equipped with a 250-ton cast iron keel which could be released in an emergency to increase the buoyancy of the hull. It was held in place by two spindles which both had to be turned to release the keel and which were tested fortnightly. The ship was equipped with twin boiler and engine rooms, and a low turtle-back hull which was almost submerged when the vessel was travelling at speed, and had a normal bunker capacity of 200 tons of coal, and 300 tons maximum.

Construction and planned sister-ships

The ''Polyphemus'' was ordered on 5 February 1878 and laid down on 21 September 1878 at

Chatham Naval Dockyard Chatham Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the River Medway in Kent. Established in Chatham in the mid-16th century, the dockyard subsequently expanded into neighbouring Gillingham (at its most extensive, in the early 20th century, ...

. She was launched on 15 June 1881 and completed in September 1882. A second ship to the same design was ordered from Chatham on 30 December 1881 but was cancelled on 10 November 1882 without being either laid down or named. Another order to the same design was placed at Chatham on 6 March 1885, the ship to have been named HMS ''Adventure'', but this was also cancelled on 12 August 1885.

Armament

The ship had five submerged 14-inch-diameter torpedo tubes, and carried 18 Mark II torpedoes. With a range of just 600 yards, these had a 26-pound

guncotton Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and ...

charge and a speed of 18 knots, only marginally faster than ''Polyphemus''. PolyphemusRam

The centre torpedo tube was fitted with a combined cast steel bow cap and ram. It hinged upwards to open, and considerable effort went into selecting the best hydrodynamic design through model testing since its size and location were found to have a major impact on the ship’s performance. It had the same effect on ''Polyphemus''’ hull as the

bulbous bow A bulbous bow is a protruding bulb at the bow (or front) of a ship just below the waterline. The bulb modifies the way the water flows around the hull, reducing drag and thus increasing speed, range, fuel efficiency, and stability. Large ships w ...

fitted to many modern ships. The bow also had a balanced two-bladed rudder fitted into it, which could be retracted into the hull, that allowed the ship to be manoeuvrable when going astern. It also slightly reduced the diameter of the turning circle (by 12 percent) when the ship was moving forwards. Her original gun armament consisted of 6 twin-barreled Nordenfelt 25mm (1-inch) automatic guns, although later in the 1880s they were replaced by 6 single Hotchkiss 3-pounder (47mm) quick-firing guns. Her deck was armoured with 3 inches (76.2mm) of armour plate. This armament was consistent with slightly later torpedo boats, although they usually carried fewer guns.

Other innovations

The ship was the first Royal Navy vessel to be fitted with 80-volt electric lighting. This was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1882 following a fatal

electrocution Electrocution is death or severe injury caused by electric shock from electric current passing through the body. The word is derived from "electro" and "execution", but it is also used for accidental death. The term "electrocution" was coine ...

aboard HMS ''Inflexible'', which had an 800-volt circuit. The vessel was fitted with a flying deck which housed the bridge and machine guns. It was designed so that if the vessel sank it would float off as two seaworthy rafts.

Operational history

HMS ''Polyphemus'' served with the Mediterranean Fleet. She was paid off at

Chatham Dockyard Chatham Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the River Medway in Kent. Established in Chatham in the mid-16th century, the dockyard subsequently expanded into neighbouring Gillingham (at its most extensive, in the early 20th century ...

in January 1900. In April 1902 she was employed as tender to HMS ''Defiance'', torpedo school at Devonport.

1885 Berehaven trial

In 1885 the ship undertook a simulated attack on a fleet at anchor at

Berehaven Castletownbere () is a town in County Cork in Ireland. It is located on the Beara Peninsula by Berehaven Harbour. It is also known as Castletown Berehaven. A regionally important fishing port, the town also serves as a commercial and retail hub ...

. The principal object of this was to test tactics for a possible attack on

Kronstadt Kronstadt (russian: Кроншта́дт, Kronshtadt ), also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt or Kronštádt (from german: link=no, Krone for " crown" and ''Stadt'' for "city") is a Russian port city in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city ...

Harbour in the event of the threatened war with

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

. Booms and nets (to catch propellers) were laid across the channel behind Bereshaven, along with small observation mines and the area covered by machine guns and torpedo boats. ''Polyphemus'' launched a simulated attack on 30 June, evading around ten torpedoes fired by 6 torpedo boats during her two-mile run-in and easily smashed through the booms and a 5-inch steel hawser holding them in place. Despite this success, no further vessels were ordered by the Royal Navy, possibly because the development of quick-traversing and quick-firing guns as she entered service had rendered the concept behind her design less practical. When she was designed, the only guns capable of penetrating her armour were too slow to train and fire to have much chance of hitting such a fast-moving ship, but by the time that she entered service a few years later, this was no longer true.

Citation

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Polyphemus (1881) Ships of the Royal Navy 1881 ships Steam rams