HMS Tiger (1913)

Tiger at anchor in her 1916–17 configuration with only a foremast
Class overview
Operators:
Preceded by:	HMS Queen Mary
Succeeded by:	Renown class
Built:	1912–14
In commission:	1914–31
Completed:	1
Scrapped:	1
History
United Kingdom
Name:	Tiger
Builder:	John Brown and Company, Clydebank
Cost:	£2,593,100, including guns
Laid down:	20 June 1912
Launched:	15 December 1913
Commissioned:	3 October 1914
Decommissioned:	15 May 1931
Fate:	Sold for scrap, February 1932
General characteristics
Type:	Battlecruiser
Displacement:	28,500 long tons (29,000 t) (normal) 33,260 long tons (33,790 t) (deep load)
Length:	704 ft (214.6 m) (o.a.)
Beam:	90 ft 6 in (27.6 m)
Draught:	32 ft 5 in (9.9 m)
Installed power:	85,000 shp (63,000 kW) 39 × water-tube boilers
Propulsion:	4 × shafts, 2 × Direct-drive steam turbine sets
Speed:	28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph)
Complement:	1,112 (September 1914) 1,459 (April 1918)
Armament:	4 × 2 – 13.5-inch (343 mm) guns 12 × 1 – 6-inch (152 mm) guns 2 × 1 – 3-inch (76 mm) AA guns 4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armour:	Belt: 3–9 in (76–229 mm) Deck: 1 to 3 in (25 to 76 mm) Bulkheads: 4 in (102 mm) Barbettes: 8 to 9 in (203 to 229 mm) Casemates: 6 in (152 mm) Turrets: 9 in (229 mm) Conning Tower: 10 in (254 mm)

HMS Tiger was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy and the eleventh ship to bear that name. She was built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1913. Tiger was the most heavily armoured battlecruiser of the Royal Navy at the start of the First World War, but was not yet ready for service. The ship was assigned to the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron (1st BCS) for the duration of the war and participated in the Battle of Dogger Bank in early 1915, though she was still shaking down and did not perform well. Tiger next participated in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, where she was only lightly damaged despite suffering many hits by German shells. Apart from providing distant cover during the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917, she spent the rest of the war on uneventful patrols in the North Sea.

Tiger was the oldest battlecruiser retained by the Royal Navy after the tonnage limits of the Washington Naval Treaty came into effect in 1922. She became a gunnery training ship in 1924 and then joined the Battlecruiser Squadron in 1929 when its flagship, HMS Hood, underwent a lengthy refit. Upon Hood's return to service in 1931, Tiger was decommissioned and sold for scrap in 1932 in accordance with the terms of the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

Tiger was the sole battlecruiser authorised in the 1911–12 Naval Programme. According to naval historian Siegfried Breyer, a sister ship named Leopard was considered in the 1912–13 Programme and deferred until 1914 as a sixth member of the Queen Elizabeth class, but there is no record of any additional battlecruiser being provided for in any naval estimates before 1914.