Three ''Rocket''-class destroyers served with the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
.
Under the 1893–1894 Naval Estimates, the
British Admiralty
The Admiralty was a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom that was responsible for the command of the Royal Navy.
Historically, its titular head was the Lord High Admiral of the ...
placed orders for 36
torpedo-boat destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were conceived in ...
s, all to be capable of , the "27-knotters", as a follow-on to the six prototype "26-knotters" ordered in the previous 1892–1893 Estimates. As was typical for torpedo craft at the time, the Admiralty left detailed design to the builders, laying down only broad requirements.
[Chesneau and Kolesnik 1979, p. 87.][Manning 1961, p. 39.]
, and were built by
J & G Thomson
John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish Naval architecture, marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including , , , , , and ''Queen Elizabeth 2 (ship), Queen Elizabeth 2''.
At its heig ...
and launched at
Clydebank
Clydebank () is a town in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. Situated on the north bank of the River Clyde, it borders the village of Old Kilpatrick (with Bowling, West Dunbartonshire, Bowling and Milton, West Dunbartonshire, Milton beyond) to the w ...
in 1894. The ships displaced 280 tons, were long and their
Normand boiler
Three-drum boilers are a class of water-tube boiler used to generate steam, typically to power Steamship, ships. They are compact and of high evaporative power, factors that encourage this use. Other boiler designs may be more efficient, although ...
s produced . to give a top speed of . They were armed with one 12-pounder and two torpedo tubes. They carried a complement of 53 officers and men.
In September 1913 the Admiralty re-classed all the surviving 27-knotter destroyers as
A Class although this only applied to ''Surly'' as the other two ships had been sold for scrap in 1912.
See also
*
A-class destroyer (1913)
The A class as designated in 1913 was a heterogeneous group of torpedo boat destroyers (TBDs) built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1890s. Some 42 vessels were constructed to the individual designs of their builders to meet Admiralty specifica ...
Notes
Bibliography
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Destroyer classes
Ship classes of the Royal Navy
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