The preceding River- or E-class destroyers of 1903 had made on the 7000ihp provided by triple expansion steam engines and coal-fired boilers, although was powered by steam turbines.[1] In November 1904, the First Sea Lord "Jackie" Fisher proposed that the next class of destroyers should make at least 33kn and should use oil-fired boilers and steam turbines as a means of achieving this.[2] This resulted in a larger ship to provide the required doubling of installed power over their predecessors, but also pushed the design to the limits of capability of contemporary technology. As a result, the Tribals were severely compromised and a somewhat retrograde step after the successful River class; they were lightly built and proved to be fragile in service. More alarmingly however, they were only provided with 90 tons of bunkerage, and with high fuel consumption resulting from a high power output of 12500shp, they were highly uneconomical and had a severely limited radius of action; Afridi and Amazon once used 9.5 tons of oil each simply to raise steam for a three-mile (5 km) return journey to a fuel depot.
Design details were left to the individual builders, as was Royal Navy practice at the time for destroyers. As a result, no two were alike[3] [4] and there was considerable heterogeneity of detail and appearance, Most noticeably the number of funnels varied from three, in Cossack and Ghurka, to six in Viking; the latter, with two single and two pairs of funnels becoming the only six-funneled destroyer ever built. With a light mainmast aft, they were the first British destroyers to have two masts.
The first five ships were designed with the armament of three QF 12-pounder guns, an improvement from the single 12-pounder and five 6-pounder guns that the River class was completed with, while the number of torpedoes remained at two 18adj=onNaNadj=on tubes.[5] [6] From the sixth ship (Saracen) onwards, however, the armament was again increased, to a pair of BL 4adj=onNaNadj=on guns, with one gun mounted forward and another on the quarterdeck.[7] From October 1908, the first five ships were modified by adding another pair of 12 pounder guns.[8]
The shift towards the larger Tribals also created a requirement for a complementary class of smaller "Coastal" destroyers giving rise to the Cricket class of small TBD, of which 36 were built between 1905 and 1908. The result of this experiment was not ideal and for the following class of destroyers (the 'G', or Beagle, class) the Admiralty reverted to a single, more uniform design for the 1908-9 programme.
Seven ships to the Admiralty specification were originally envisaged, but only five vessels were ordered and built under the 1905-06 Programme, all to their builders' own designs.
| Name | Builder | Laid down | Launch date | Commissioned | Fate | Image | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 August 1906 | 8 May 1907 | 7 September 1909 | Sold on 9 December 1919 for breaking up | ||||
| 13 November 1905 | 16 February 1907 | 12 March 1908 | Sold on 12 December 1919 for breaking up | ||||
| Hawthorn Leslie and Company, Newcastle upon Tyne | 6 February 1906 | 29 April 1907 | 17 December 1908 | mined and sunk off Dungeness Buoy on 8 February 1917 | |||
| 1 May 1906 | 15 March 1907 | June 1908 | Sold on 27 May 1919 for breaking up | ||||
| 13 November 1905 | 25 June 1907 | 9 April 1908 | Sold on 9 May 1921 for breaking up |
Five more vessels were proposed, but only two were ordered and built under the 1906-07 Programme.
| Name | Builder | Laid down | Launch date | Commissioned | Fate | Image | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J I Thornycroft, Woolston | 24 June 1907 | 29 July 1908 | April 1909 | Sold on 22 October 1919 for breaking up | |||
| J Samuel White, Cowes | 12 July 1907 | 31 March 1908 | 25 June 1909 | Sold on 22 October 1919 for breaking up |
A final five vessels were ordered and built under the 1907-08 Programme.
| Name | Builder | Laid down | Launch date | Commissioned | Fate | Image | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J Samuel White, Cowes | 22 June 1908 | 20 March 1909 | 21 October 1909 | Sold on 30 June 1920 for breaking up | |||
| 6 August 1909 | 24 May 1909 | 11 November 1909 | Mined and sunk off Wirlingen Light Ship, Zeebrugge, on 7 May 1915 | ||||
| J I Thornycroft, Woolston | 18 May 1908 | 21 April 1909 | 24 August 1909 | Torpedoed and damaged by German destroyers in action off Folkestone, on 27 October 1916 | |||
| Palmers, Jarrow 29 June 1910 | 11 June 1908 | 14 September 1909 | 29 June 1910 | Sold on 12 December 1919 for breaking up | |||
| Hawthorn Leslie and Company, Newcastle upon Tyne | 18 August 1908 | 16 September 1909 | 19 March 1910 | Mined and damaged off Dover on 8 November 1916 |
In October 1916, it was proposed on 8 November 1916 that the two undamaged 'ends' might be joined together, which was completed at Chatham Royal Dockyard 7 June 1917 by joining the undamaged fore section of Zulu and the rear section of Nubian respectively. The resulting destroyer was commissioned on 7 June 1917 as, which was sold for scrapping 1919.