Bramble-class gunboat (1898)
HMS Thistle, c.1910.
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Bramble class |
| Builders: | |
| Operators: |
 Royal Navy
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| Preceded by: | Redbreast class (1889) |
| Succeeded by: | n/a - designation abolished |
| Built: | 1898 - 1899 |
| In commission: | 1900 - 1925 |
| Completed: | 4 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | First class gunboat |
| Displacement: | 710 tons standard |
| Length: | 180 ft (55 m) |
| Beam: | 33 ft (10 m) |
| Draught: | 8 ft (2.4 m) |
| Installed power: | 1,300 ihp (970 kW) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 13.5 kn (25.0 km/h) |
| Range: |
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| Boats & landing craft carried: |
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| Crew: | 85 |
| Armament: | |
The Bramble-class gunboat was a type of warship used by the Royal Navy between the 1890s and the 1920s. The four ships of this class were notable as the final development of the Victorian gunboat tradition, and for being one of the last classes of warship designed to travel under sail. One of them, HMS Thistle, retained a functional sailing rig into the mid-1920s.
The four Bramble-class gunboats were designed to protect the far-flung outposts of Great Britain's colonial empire. At 180 feet long and 33 feet in beam, with a draft of just 8 feet and a displacement of only 710 tons, they were the smallest seagoing vessels built for the Royal Navy in the 1890s. They were also among the cheapest, built at a cost of just over £50,000 each, less than 5% of the cost of a contemporary battleship.
The small dimensions and shallow draught of the Bramble class were designed to facilitate navigation on the complex coastlines and great rivers of Africa, South Asia and the Far East. The drawback this imposed was a limited fuel supply. The type entered service with a standard bunkerage of just 50 tons of coal. For Thistle, considered one of the better-performing ships of the class, this would only provide two and a half days' movement at her sustained cruising speed of 11.5 knots, and full-speed runs used nearly twice the quantity of coal over any given length of time. In practice, storage was found for 145 tons of coal, but this was still sufficient for only one week of cruising.
The Bramble class were therefore designed with a sailing rig to supplement their engines. This was still widely accepted in the 1890s as a necessity for long-range warships, which would not always have reliable access to coaling stations. Modern ships which retained a full sailing rig in the 1890s included the Russian armoured cruiser Rurik, the six German Bussard-class light cruisers, the United States Navy's Annapolis-class gunboats, and the Royal Navy's own Condor-class and Cadmus-class sloops.
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