HMS Canopus (1897)
HMS Canopus during World War I
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Canopus |
| Namesake: | Canopus, Egypt |
| Ordered: | 1896 Programme |
| Builder: | Portsmouth Dockyard |
| Cost: | £921,316 |
| Laid down: | 4 January 1897 |
| Launched: | 12 October 1897 |
| Completed: | 5 December 1899 |
| Commissioned: | 5 December 1899 |
| Decommissioned: | April 1919 |
| Fate: | Sold for scrapping 18 February 1920 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Canopus-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement: | 12,950 tons |
| Length: | 431 ft (131.4 m) |
| Beam: | 74 ft (22.6 m) |
| Draught: | 26 ft (7.9 m) |
| Propulsion: | 2 shafts, water tube boilers, vertical triple expansion steam engines, 15,400 ihp (11,500 kW) |
| Speed: | 18 knots (33 km/h) |
| Complement: | 750 |
| Armament: |
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| Armour: |
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HMS Canopus was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the British Royal Navy and the lead ship of the Canopus class. At the beginning of the First World War she was involved in the search for the German East Asia Squadron of Admiral Graf Spee. Too slow to follow Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock's cruisers, she missed the Battle of Coronel, but fired the first shots of the Battle of the Falklands. Transferred to the Mediterranean she took part in the Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign.
Canopus's keel was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard on 4 January 1897. The ship was launched on 12 October 1897, and completed on 5 December 1899. She was named after the ancient city of Canopus, Egypt, where the Battle of the Nile took place.
Canopus and her five sister ships were designed for service in the Far East, where the new rising power Japan was beginning to build a powerful and dangerous navy. These vessels were intended to be able to transit the Suez Canal. They were designed to be smaller (by about 2,000 tons), lighter and faster than their predecessors, the Majestic-class battleships, although they were slightly longer at 430 feet (130 m). To save weight, Canopus carried less armour than the Majestics, although the change from Harvey armour in the Majestics to Krupp armour in Canopus meant that the loss in protection was not as great as it might have been, Krupp armour having greater protective value at a given weight than its Harvey equivalent. Still, the armour of the Canopus class was light enough to make them almost second-class battleships. Part of their armour scheme included the use of a special 1-inch (25 mm) armoured deck over the belt to defend against plunging fire by howitzers that France reportedly planned to install on its ships, although this report proved to be false.
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