HMS Vengeance (1899)
.jpg)
HMS Vengeance in harbour, prior to the Royal Navy's 1903 adoption of the overall grey warship colour scheme.
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom
|
|
| Name: | HMS Vengeance |
| Ordered: | 1897 Programme |
| Builder: | Vickers, Barrow-in-Furness |
| Cost: | £891,417 |
| Laid down: | 23 August 1898 |
| Launched: | 25 July 1899 |
| Completed: | April 1902 |
| Commissioned: | 8 April 1902 |
| Decommissioned: | 9 July 1920 |
| Nickname(s): | "The Lord's Own" |
| Fate: | Sold for scrapping 1 December 1921 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Canopus-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement: | 12,950 tons |
| Length: | 431 ft (131 m) |
| Beam: | 74 ft (23 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 |
| Complement: | 750 |
| Armament: |
|
| Armour: |
|
HMS Vengeance was a Royal Navy pre-dreadnought battleship of the Canopus class. Built by Vickers, her keel was laid down in August 1898 and she was launched eleven months later. Her main battery consisted of four 12-inch (305-mm) guns in twin turrets fore and aft, and she had top speed of 18 knots. Commissioned in April 1902, Vengeance served initially in the Far East, transferring to the Channel Fleet in 1906 and then the Home Fleet two years later. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, she was based in the Mediterranean, and saw action in Dardanelles Campaign in 1915. After further service in East and South African waters, she returned to England in 1917 and was used for research and ammunition storage. She was sold for scrap in 1921 and broken up the following year.
HMS Vengeance was laid down by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness on 23 August 1898 and launched on 25 July 1899. Her completion was delayed by damage to the fitting-out dock, and she was not completed until April 1902. She was the first British battleship completely built, armed, and engined by a single company.
Vengeance 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, so the Vengeance class ships had to be small enough 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 (131 m). In order to save weight, Vengeance and her sisters carried less armor than the Majestics, although the change from Harvey armour in the Majestics to Krupp armour in Vengeance 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, her armour was light enough to make her almost a second-class battleship. Part of her armour scheme included the use of a special 1-inch (2.54 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.
...
Wikipedia