HMS Shannon (1875)
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | 29 August 1873 at Pembroke Dockyard |
| Launched: | 11 November 1875 |
| Completed: | 17 September 1877 |
| Commissioned: | 1877 |
| Decommissioned: | |
| Fate: | Sold for scrapping 12 December 1899 |
| Struck: | |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 5670 tons |
| Length: | 260 ft (79 m) |
| Beam: | 54 ft (16.5 m) |
| Draught: | 22 ft 3 in (6.8 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sail. As built, with 24000 ft² (2200 m²) of sail, reduced shortly afterwards to 21500 ft² (2000 m²) Coal fired Laird compound horizontal steam engine, 8 x cylindrical boilers, single screw, 3,370 indicated horsepower (2.5 MW) |
| Speed: | 12.25 knots (23 km/h) maximum |
| Range: | Bunker capacity originally 280 tons coal, later increased to 560 tons, although sails allowed range only limited by food and water capacity. |
| Complement: | 452 |
| Armament: | 2 x 10 in (254 mm) muzzle loading rifled guns, 7 x 9 in (229 mm) muzzle loading rifled guns 6 x 20 pounder (9 kg) breech loading guns added in 1881 4 x torpedo tubes added in 1881 |
| Armour: | Belt: 6 to 9 in (150 to 230 mm) on 10 to 13 in (250 to 330 mm) teak Deck: 1.5 to 3 in (38 to 76 mm) |
The eighth HMS Shannon was the first British armoured cruiser. She was the last Royal Navy ironclad to be built which had a propeller that could be hoisted out of the water to reduce drag when she was under sail, and the first to have an armoured deck.
When she was built, she was considered to be a long-range cruising ironclad frigate, the term cruiser being invented and applied later. To allow her to operate for long periods far from British ports and coaling stations she was equipped with sails and a copper and wood sheathing on her hull.
She was designed as a counter to the perceived threat from second class ironclad anti-commerce raiders such as the Russian General Admiral and her sister Gerzog Edinburgski. These ships were fast and lightly armed, and Shannon was to be better armed and armoured than them and with sufficient range and speed to catch them. In practice although she could outgun these ships, her design top speed of 13 knots (24 km/h), and actual speed of 12.25 knots (23 km/h) meant that she would have been too slow to get within range of many of them.
She also became obsolete very quickly since she lacked the armour of a battleship and the speed of later cruisers. In particular her low speed meant that of her 22 years in service, only three were actually spent in foreign waters - a year in the China station followed by two in the Pacific station. Her ammunition supply in the Pacific was also a problem as she was the only British ship there with 10 inch (254 mm) guns, although had her speed been sufficient she could have had her armament altered.
She was relegated to coastguard duty in 1883 and placed in the reserve fleet in 1893 before being sold for scrapping in 1899.
See HMS Shannon for other ships of this name.
[edit] References
- John Beeler, Birth of the Battleship - British capital ship design 1870-1881, Chatham Publishing, 2001 ISBN 1-86176-167-8
- David Lyon, The Ship - Steam, steel and torpedoes, National Maritime Museum, 1980, ISBN 0-11-290318-5
- J. J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy, Greenhill Books, 1987.
- Battleships-cruisers.co.uk
- Warships on the Web
