Charger-class destroyer explained

The three Charger-class destroyers were all ordered by the British Admiralty on 12 October 1893 and on completion in early 1896 they served with the Royal Navy until 1911.

As part of the 1893–1894 Naval Estimates, the British Admiralty placed orders for 36 torpedo-boat destroyers, 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.[1] [2]

, and were built by Yarrow Shipbuilders to their builders' design at a contract price of £108,600, or £36,200 each,[3] It was originally intended that they would be armed with one 12-pounder quick-firing gun forward and three 6-pounder guns, mounted on the broadside and aft, and three 18-inch torpedo tubes, one fixed in a bow mount and two on a revolving mount abaft the two funnels;[4] however the fixed bow tube fitted in the preceding '26-knotter' type had subsequently been found to throw up too much spray and was removed, and in October 1893 it was agreed that the bow tube should be omitted, giving "a clean sharp stem with no projections"[5] and instead two extra 6-pounder guns were installed en echelon amidships. These three ships - and the similar three Ardent Class destroyers (ordered from Thornycroft in the same week) - were the first TBDs to omit this fixed bow tube. They carried a complement of 2 officers and 48 ratings (comprising 20 deck department and 28 engine room compartment).[6]

These three ships did not quite meet the speed requirement of 27 knots for which they were designed. In three-hour trials they averaged the following power (ihp) and speed:

Name Trials ihp Trials speed
(knots) 		R.P.M. Displacement
(tons)
3,177 25.82 364.6 229
3,216 26.2 361.5 233
2,960 26.084 361.7 233
Their original two locomotive boilers were very troublesome and in their first few years of service the three ships were out of commission most of the time, but these were replaced by four new water-tube boilers (from Thornycroft) in 1899/1900 at Earle's Shipbuilding yard at Kingston upon Hull.[7] This replaced the original closely-spaced twin funnels by three widely-spaced funnels (with the middle funnel twice the size of the others, as it served two boilers), like the majority of the other destroyers of the 1893-1894 Programme, and the ships continued to provide good service - all serving in Home waters until 1911. They were then decommissioned and all three were sold in 1912 to be scrapped.

Vessels in class

Name Builder Yard
Number 		Laid down Launched Completed Fate
991 November 1893 15 September 1894 January 1896 Sold 14 May 1912
Yarrow Shipbuilders 992 December 1893 28 November 1894 March 1896 Sold 14 May 1912
Yarrow Shipbuilders 993 December 1893 16 June 1894 May 1896 Sold 9 July 1912

See also

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Chesneau and Kolesnik 1979, p. 87.
  2. Manning 1961, p. 39.
  3. Lyon, op.cit., pp.56.
  4. Web site: HMS Ardent Association Online . hmsardent.org.uk . 27 July 2010 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110725185154/http://www.hmsardent.org.uk/archive/20201.html . 25 July 2011 . dead .
  5. Lyon, op.cit., pp.98.
  6. Lyon, op.cit., pp.206.
  7. Lyon, op.cit., pp.56.

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