Two ''Swordfish''-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 ...
. 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, Tyne and Wear, Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Armstrong Whitworth built armaments, ships, locomot ...
at
Elswick, Tyne and Wear
Elswick ( ) is a district and electoral ward of the city and metropolitan borough of Newcastle upon Tyne, in the county of Tyne and Wear, England, 1.9 miles west of the city centre, bordering the River Tyne. Historically in Northumberland, Els ...
launching in 1895. Fitted with Yarrow boilers, they could make 27 knots and were armed with one twelve pounder and two torpedo tubes.
Requirement
After ordering six prototype
torpedo boat destroyers 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 f ...
and
Laird
Laird () is a Scottish word for minor lord (or landlord) and is a designation that applies to an owner of a large, long-established Scotland, Scottish estate. In the traditional Scottish order of precedence, a laird ranked below a Baronage of ...
as part of the 1892–1893 shipbuilding programme, 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 ...
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 (ship), 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 t ...
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
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
. 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 fire. Fuel is burned inside the furnace, creating hot gas which boils water in the steam-generat ...
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.
See also
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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 ...
Citations
Bibliography
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{{A class destroyer (1913)
Destroyer classes
Ship classes of the Royal Navy