Alert class sloop
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Torch
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Alert-class sloops |
| Builders: | Sheerness Royal Dockyard |
| Operators: |
 Royal Navy
|
| Built: | 1894 |
| In commission: | 1894–1926 |
| Completed: | 2 |
| Lost: | 0 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Screw steel sloop |
| Displacement: | 960 tons |
| Length: | 180 ft (55 m) |
| Beam: | 32 ft (9.8 m) |
| Draught: | 12 ft (3.7 m) |
| Installed power: | 1,400 hp (1,044 kW) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Sail plan: |
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| Complement: | 107 |
| Armament: | |
| Armour: | Protective deck of 1 in (2.5 cm) to 1.5 in (3.8 cm) steel over machinery and boilers. |
The Alert class was a two-ship class of 6-gun screw steel sloops built for the Royal Navy in 1894.
Alert and Torch were constructed of steel to a design by William White, the Royal Navy Director of Naval Construction. They were powered by a three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engine developing 1,400 horsepower (1,000 kW) and driving a single screw.
The class was originally designed and built with barque-rigged sails, but both ships were re-rigged as barquentines before 1900 by removing the main yards.
Both ships of the class were armed with four 4-inch and four 3-pounder guns, and three machine guns.
Screw sloops of Alert's type had been obsolete for many years, but they remained ideal for patrolling Britain's far flung maritime empire.
Alert served on the North America and West Indies Station, including a period in late 1902 and early 1903 when, under Commodore Montgomerie in HMS Charybdis, she enforced a blockade of the Venezuelan coast. During this period she captured the Venezuelan Zumbador. She was laid up for a time at Bermuda, but after 1910 served on the East Indies Station in the Persian Gulf, employed in the suppression of gun-running. She was sold to the civil authority at Basra in 1926 for use as a pilot vessel. She was broken up in 1949.
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Wikipedia