Three ''Handy''-class destroyers served with the
Royal Navy. , and were all built by Fairfield.
Design and construction
As part of the 1893–1894 Naval Estimates, the
British Admiralty
The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of it ...
placed orders for 36
torpedo-boat destroyers, all to be capable of , as a follow-on to the six prototype "26-knotters" ordered in the previous 1892–1893 Estimates. Of the 36 destroyers, three ships (''Handy'', ''Hart'' and ''Hunter'') were ordered from
Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of
Govan,
[Lyon 2001, pp. 19–20.] the first torpedo craft to be built by that shipyard.
[Lyon 2001, p. 87.] As 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.]
Fairfield's design was
long overall and
between perpendiculars, with 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 .
Displacement was light and full load,
while the ship's complement was 53 officers and men.
[Manning 1961, p. 36.] Three
Thornycroft boilers fed steam at to two 3-cylinder
triple expansion steam engines rated at and driving two propeller shafts.
Two funnels were fitted.
[Friedman 2009, p. 48.] Armament consisted of a single
QF 12 pounder 12 cwt gun and three 6-pounder guns, with two
18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes.
[Friedman 2009, p. 291.] As a gunboat, one of the torpedo tubes could be removed to accommodate a further two six-pounders.
[Lyon 2001, pp. 98–99.][Friedman 2009, p. 40.]
In September 1913 the Admiralty re-classed all the surviving 27-knotter destroyers as
A Class, although this only applied to ''Handy'' herself as the other two ships had already been sold for scrap in 1912.
See also
*
A-class destroyer (1913)
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
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{{A class destroyer (1913)
Destroyer classes
Ship classes of the Royal Navy