Spanish battleship Pelayo
 |
|
| History | |
|---|---|
.svg){kind=small} |
|
| Name: | Pelayo |
| Namesake: | Pelagius of Asturias |
| Builder: | La Seyne, France |
| Laid down: | April 1885 |
| Launched: | 5 February 1887 |
| Completed: | summer 1888 |
| Nickname(s): | Solitario ("Solitary" or "Lonely") |
| Fate: | Disarmed 1923; scrapped 1925 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Battleship |
| Displacement: | 9,745 tons |
| Length: | 334 ft 8 in (102.01 m) |
| Beam: | 66 ft 3 in (20.19 m) |
| Draft: | 24 ft 9 in (7.54 m) maximum |
| Installed power: | 9,600 ihp (8,000 ihp on trials with natural draft) |
| Propulsion: | 2-shaft, vertical compound, 12 return-tube boilers; in 1897-1898 her boilers were replaced by 16 Niclausse boilers. |
| Sail plan: | As built 4,000 square feet (1,219 square meters), but quickly removed. |
| Speed: |
|
| Complement: | 520 officers and enlisted |
| Armament: |
|
| Armor: |
|
| Notes: | 800 tons of coal |
Pelayo was an ironclad battleship of the Spanish Navy which served in the Spanish fleet from 1888 to 1925. For many years, she was the only battleship and the most powerful unit of the Spanish Navy.
Ordered in November 1884, Pelayo was built at La Seyne in France. Her keel was laid in April 1885, and she was launched on 5 February 1887 and completed in the summer of 1888. She was originally intended to be the first of a new class of battleships, but a crisis with the German Empire in the Caroline Islands in 1890 led to the cancellation of these plans and the diversion of funds to the construction of the Infanta Maria Teresa-class armored cruisers. Pelayo was viewed as too slow and having too little coal endurance for colonial service, and ended up being the only member of her class.
The design of Pelayo was based on that of the French battleship Marceau, modified to give her a draft that was 3 feet (0.91 m) shallower so that she could transit the Suez Canal at full load displacement. Originally equipped with sails, she had them deleted soon after completion. She had two funnels. Her 16-centimetre (6.30 in) gun was a bow chaser. Her armor belt was 6 feet 11 inches (2.11 m) wide amidships and extended 2 feet (0.61 m) above and almost 5 feet (1.5 m) below the waterline. Internally, she had French-style cellular construction with 13 watertight bulkheads and a double bottom.
She was a barbette ship, an ancestor of the modern battleship with the main battery mounted in open barbettes on armored rotating platforms, in contrast to the heavy self-contained turrets more common to the period and which the progress of the design of modern battleships would soon abandon.
Her main guns could be loaded in any position, and consisted of two Gonzalez Hontoria-built 32-centimetre (12.6 in) guns mounted fore and aft on the centerline and two Gonzalez Hontoria 28-centimetre (11.0 in) guns, also in barbettes, with one mounted on either beam
Pelayo was reconstructed at La Seyne in 1897–98, receiving armor for her midships battery and having her 16-and-12-centimetre (6.30 and 4.72 in) guns replaced by 14-centimetre (5.51 in) pieces, one mounted as a bow chaser and the rest on the broadside. However, the installation of these new guns was disrupted and delayed when she was rushed back into service after the Spanish–American War began.
...
Wikipedia