HMS Revenge (1892)

HMS ''Revenge'' was one of seven ''Royal Sovereign''-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy during the 1890s. She spent much of her early career as a flagship for the Flying Squadron and in the Mediterranean, Home and Channel Fleets. ''Revenge'' was assigned to the International Squadron blockading Crete during the 1897–1898 revolt there against the Ottoman Empire. She was placed in reserve upon her return home in 1900, and was then briefly assigned as a coast guard ship before she joined the Home Fleet in 1902. The ship became a gunnery training ship in 1906 until she was paid off in 1913.

''Revenge'' was recommissioned the following year, after the start of World War I, to bombard the coast of Flanders as part of the Dover Patrol, during which she was hit four times, but was not seriously damaged. She had anti-torpedo bulges fitted in early 1915, the first ship to be fitted with them operationally. The ship was renamed ''Redoubtable'' later that year and was refitted as an accommodation ship by the end of the year. The last surviving member of her class, the ship was sold for scrap in November 1919.

Design and description

The design of the ''Royal Sovereign''-class ships was derived from that of the battleships, greatly enlarged to improve seakeeping and to provide space for a secondary armament as in the preceding battleships. The ships displaced at normal load and at deep load. They had a length between perpendiculars of and an overall length of , a beam of , and a draught of .Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 32 As a flagship, ''Revenge''s crew consisted of 695 officers and ratings in 1903.Burt, p. 73

The ''Royal Sovereign''s were powered by a pair of three-cylinder, vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft. Their Humphrys & Tennant engines were designed to produce a total of and a maximum speed of using steam provided by eight cylindrical boilers with forced draught. The ships carried a maximum of of coal which gave them a range of at a speed of .

Their main armament consisted of four breech-loading (BL) guns mounted in two twin-gun barbettes, one each fore and aft of the superstructure.Parkes, p. 355 Each gun was provided with 80 rounds. Their secondary armament consisted of ten quick-firing (QF) guns. 200 rounds per gun were carried by the ships. Sixteen QF 6-pounder () guns of an unknown type and a dozen QF 3-pounder () Hotchkiss guns were fitted for defence against torpedo boats. The two 3-pounders in the upper fighting top were removed in 1903–1904, and all of the remaining light guns from the lower fighting tops and main deck followed in 1905–1909. The ''Royal Sovereign''-class ships mounted seven 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tubes, although ''Revenge'' had four of hers removed in 1902.

The ''Royal Sovereign''s' armour scheme was similar to that of the ''Trafalgar''s, as the waterline belt of compound armour only protected the area between the barbettes. The belt and transverse bulkheads thick closed off the ends of the belt. Above the belt was a strake of nickel-steel armour closed off by transverse bulkheads.

The barbettes were protected by compound armour, ranging in thickness from and the casemates for the 6-inch guns had a thickness equal to their diameter. The thicknesses of the armour deck ranged from . The walls of the forward conning tower were thick and the aft conning tower was protected by 3-inch plates.

Construction

''Revenge'' was the ninth ship of her name to serve in the Royal NavyColledge, p. 293 and was ordered under the Naval Defence Act Programme of 1889. The ship was laid down by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company at their shipyard in Jarrow in Tyne and Wear, England, on 12 February 1891. She was floated out of the drydock on 3 November 1892, and completed on 22 March 1894 at a cost of £954,825.

Operational history

1892-1896

Upon completion, ''Revenge'' was placed in reserve at Portsmouth. Almost two years later, she mobilised there on 14 January 1896 as flagship of the Particular Service Squadron, soon renamed the Flying Squadron, which was formed in response to rising tensions in Europe following the Jameson Raid and Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II's telegram of support to the Boer government. The squadron was briefly attached to the Mediterranean Fleet in the middle of the year. When it was disbanded on 5 November, ''Revenge'' relieved the battleship as the flagship of the second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet.Burt, p. 94

International Squadron

From February 1897 to December 1898, ''Revenge'' served in the International Squadron, a multinational force made up of ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, French Navy, Imperial German Navy, Italian Royal Navy (''Regia Marina''), Imperial Russian Navy, and Royal Navy that intervened in the 1897-1898 Greek uprising on Crete against rule by the Ottoman Empire. She served as flagship of the British component of the squadron, initially under Rear-Admiral Robert Harris, and later under Rear-Admiral Gerard Noel, and played a very active role in the International Squadron's operations. Leading a Royal Navy force that reinforced the battleship , the British ship on station at Crete when unrest broke out in early February 1897, ''Revenge'' and the battleship arrived at Canea (now Chania) on 9 February 1897. She contributed personnel to an international landing force of sailors and marines the squadron put ashore at Canea on 15 February 1897. On 21 February 1897, she joined the British torpedo gunboats and , the Russian battleship '' Imperator Aleksandr II'', the Austro-Hungarian armored cruiser , and the German protected cruiser in the International Squadron's first direct offensive action, a brief bombardment of Cretan insurgent positions on the heights east of Canea after the insurgents refused the squadron's order to take down a Greek flag they had raised, and she hit the farmstead that served as the insurgents′ base of operations with three 6-inch (152-mm) shells. After a bombardment by the British battleship on 26 and 27 March 1897 forced insurgents to abandon their siege of the Izzeddin Fortress near the entrance to Suda Bay, ''Revenge'' put a contingent of Royal Marines ashore that occupied the fortress.

Thanks to the International Squadron's actions, organized fighting on Crete ended in late March 1897, although the insurrection continued.McTiernan, p. 28. The squadron focused on supporting international occupation forces ashore and enforcing a blockade of Crete and key ports in Greece. After Rear Admiral Noel relieved Rear Admiral Harris on 12 January 1898, Noel withdrew his flag from Crete, and ''Revenge'' conducted operations elsewhere. However, a violent riot by Cretan Turks in Candia (now Heraklion) on 6 September 1898, prompted reinforcement of the international forces on Crete, and ''Revenge'' arrived with Rear-Admiral Noel aboard on 12 September 1898. In a meeting aboard ''Revenge'' on the morning of 13 September 1898, Noel ordered the Ottoman governor, Edhem Pasha, to take a number of actions to ensure that no further violence would take place and deliver the ringleaders of the riot to the British to face trial; when Edhem Pasha expressed reluctance, ''Revenge'' and ''Camperdown'' conducted a demonstration that convinced him to comply. The riot led the International Squadron to demand the withdrawal of all Ottoman forces from Crete, and when the final Ottoman troops finally departed on 6 November 1898, sailors from ''Revenge'' and the British battleship supervised their embarkation aboard the British torpedo gunboat . On 19 December 1898, ''Revenge'', with Noel aboard, joined the Italian battleship ''Francesco Morosini'' (carrying the admiral commanding the International Squadron's Italian ships) and the Russian armored cruiser '' Gerzog Edinburgski'' (with the senior Russian commander, Rear Admiral Nikolai Skrydlov, aboard) in steaming to Milos with the French protected cruiser '' Bugeaud'', flagship of the International Squadron's overall commander, Rear Admiral Édouard Pottier. At Milos, they rendezvoused with Prince George of Greece and Denmark aboard his yacht. After Prince George boarded ''Bugeaud'' on 20 December, ''Revenge'', ''Francesco Morosini'', and ''Gerzog Edinburgski'' escorted ''Bugeaud'' to Crete, where Prince George disembarked on 21 December 1898 to take office as the High Commissioner of an autonomous Cretan State under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, bringing the Cretan uprising to an end. The International Squadron then dissolved.

1899-1913

In 1899, ''Revenge'' suffered a cordite explosion in one of her 6-inch (152-mm) magazines due to spontaneous combustion, but the damage was not very severe because only three cartridges detonated. In April 1900, the battleship replaced her in the Mediterranean and she returned home, paying off into Fleet Reserve at Chatham Dockyard. During this time the ship had a wireless telegraph installed. On 18 April 1901, ''Revenge'' was recommissioned at Chatham by Captain Frederic Fisher to relieve ''Alexandra'' as both the coast guard ship at Portland and the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Gerard Noel, Admiral Superintendent of Naval Reserves. In March 1902, she arrived at Portsmouth for a refit that included the provision of casemates for her upper-deck six-inch guns, and her crew was temporarily transferred to the elderly ironclad , which also took on her duties at Portland. Captain Fisher and his crew were back on board ''Revenge'' in early June 1902, following gun trials after the repairs. After the refit, she took part in the fleet review held at Spithead on 16 August 1902 for the coronation of King Edward VII, then commissioned in October 1902 to serve as flagship of the Home Fleet upon its creation.Parkes, p. 362

In April 1904, ''Revenge'' and her sister ship both struck a submerged wreck off the Scilly Isles while serving with the Home Fleet, damaging their bottoms. In July 1905, the ship participated in maneuvers with the Reserve Fleet and was then transferred to the Portsmouth Reserve Division on 1 September 1905. In June 1906, she relieved the battleship ''Colossus'' as the gunnery training ship at Portsmouth and was assigned to the gunnery school HMS ''Excellent''. On 13 June 1908, ''Revenge'' was struck by the merchant ship when the latter was cut loose by her tugboat during a sudden squall in Portsmouth Harbour. In October 1909, she conducted gunnery tests on the obsolete battleship to evaluate the effects of shells against varying thicknesses of armour. On 7 January 1912, the ship was badly damaged when, during a gale

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