HMS Hero (1885)

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Career
Laid down:	April 11, 1884
Floated out:	October 27, 1885
Completed:	May 1888
Sunk as target:	February 18, 1908
Specification
Displacement:	6,440 tons
Length:	270 ft
Beam:	58 ft
Draught:	21 ft 7 inches light, 25 ft 8 inches deep load
Engine:	2-shaft Rennie inverted compound I.H.P. = 4,500
Speed:	14 knots
Complement:	330
Armament:	An armoured ram Two 12-inch breech-loaders Four 6-inch breech-loaders Seven 6-pounder quick firers Six torpedo tubes
Armour:	Belt 12 inches tapering to 8 inches Citadel 12 inches to 10.5 inches Turret 14 inches face, 12 inches sides Conning tower 12 inches to 6 inches Bulkhead 11.5 inches to 10.5 inches Deck 2.5 inches to 1.25 inches

HMS Hero was the second and final ship of the Conqueror class of battleships. She was an ironclad who served in the Victorian Royal Navy.

Hero was, like her sister-ship, designed to be an improved version of HMS Rupert with a ram as her main armament. It was at that time assumed by the Board of Admiralty and within Naval Architecture circles that the current supremacy of armour over artillery would allow such a ship to charge and to impact upon an enemy vessel without being seriously damaged by incoming enemy gunfire. This assumption was never tested in action.

The ship carried two big guns in a turret placed on the foredeck. Gunfire over the bow was found to cause serious blast damage to the deck and the structures thereon, while firing abaft the beam caused blast damage to the bridge and superstructure. The guns were therefore limited to a firing arc of some 45 degrees on either side; as they had been installed with the express intention of engaging an enemy on the beam who had evaded a ramming attack, this limitation was not seen as serious.

Six tubes for the launching of fourteen-inch torpedos were mounted; they were carried in the after part of the superstructure, and were intended for attack on enemy ships who had evaded, or were unsuitable for, ramming attack. The smaller guns shipped were for defence against small craft, against whom the main armament could not be easily or economically employed.

By the time she was launched, the ramming concept had been discarded, leaving her and her sister exposed as perhaps the two most useless turret-armed battleships ever built.

[edit] Service History

She was commissioned at Portsmouth in May 1888 as tender to the gunnery school Excellent. She remained there until February 1905, when she passed into Dockyard Reserve. She took part in the manoevres of 1888, 1889, 1890 and 1891 but saw no other active service. In November 1907 she was designated as a target ship, and was sunk off the Kentish Knock on February 18, 1908.