Acorn class destroyer
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HMS Fury
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Builders: | |
| Preceded by: | Beagle class |
| Succeeded by: | Acheron class |
| Built: | 1910–1911 |
| In commission: | 1910–1921 |
| Completed: | 20 |
| Lost: | 3 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Destroyer |
| Displacement: | 730 to 780 tons |
| Length: | 246 ft 6 in (75.13 m) |
| Beam: | 25 ft 6 in (7.77 m) |
| Draught: | 7 ft (2.1 m)–10 ft (3.0 m) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 27 knots (50 km/h) |
| Endurance: | 170 tons oil |
| Complement: | 72 |
| Armament: |
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The Acorn class (officially redesignated the H class in 1913) was a class of twenty destroyers of the Royal Navy all built under the 1909-1910 Programme, and completed between 1910 and 1911. The Acorns served during World War I.
After the coal-burning Beagle class of the 1908–1909 shipbuilding programme, the British Admiralty decided to return to oil-fuelled machinery, as pioneered in the Tribal class of 1905 and HMS Swift of 1907, for the destroyers to be built under the 1909–1910 programme, which became the Acorn class. This change allowed a smaller vessel than the Beagles even with an increase in armament.
While the detailed design of earlier destroyer classes was left to the builders resulting in individual ships differing considerably, this changed for the Acorns, where a standard hull design was used, allowing more shipyards to bid for orders, thus driving down costs, while reducing the time and effort required for the Admiralty to check and approve each builder's designs. Machinery design, however, was still left to the builders, although it had to fit into the space allowed in the standard design. They had a reasonably uniform appearance, with three funnels, a tall, thin fore funnel, a short, thick central and a short narrow after stack.
The ships were 240 feet 0 inches (73.15 m) long between perpendiculars and 246 feet 0 inches (74.98 m) overall, with a beam of 25 feet 3 inches (7.70 m) and a draught of between 7 feet 4 1⁄2 inches (2.248 m) and 8 feet 10 inches (2.69 m) depending on load. Displacement was 760 long tons (770 t) normal and 855 long tons (869 t) full load. Nineteen of the twenty ships of the Acorn class had three propeller shafts driven by Parsons steam turbines, fed by four boilers (White-Forster boilers in the three J. Samuel White built ships, (Redpole, Rifleman and Ruby), Yarrow boilers in the remaining ships), with the boiler out-takes routed to three funnels. The remaining ship of the class, the John Brown & Company-built Brisk, had a two shaft arrangement powered by Brown-Curtis impulse turbines. The ships were required to reach 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph), the same speed as the Beagle class, which was expected to need 13,500 shaft horsepower (10,100 kW). The ships had a crew of 72 officers and men.
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