Tribal class destroyer (1905)
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Tribal (or F) |
| Operators: |
 Royal Navy
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| Preceded by: | River class |
| Succeeded by: | Beagle (or G) class |
| Built: | 1905–1908 |
| In commission: | 1907–1920 |
| Completed: | 12 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Destroyer |
| Displacement: | 860 - 940 tons |
| Length: | 275 ft (84 m) |
| Beam: | 28 ft (8.5 m) |
| Draught: | 8 ft 6 in (2.59 m) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 33 knots (61 km/h; 38 mph) |
| Armament: |
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The Tribal or F class was a class of destroyers built for the Royal Navy. Twelve ships were built between 1905 and 1908 and all saw service during World War I, where they saw action in the North Sea and English Channel as part of the 6th Flotilla and Dover Patrols.
The preceding River- or E-class destroyers of 1903 had made 25.5 knots (47.2 km/h; 29.3 mph) on the 7,000 ihp (5,200 kW) provided by triple expansion steam engines and coal-fired boilers, although HMS Eden was powered by steam turbines. In November 1904, the First Sea Lord "Jackie" Fisher proposed that the next class of destroyers should make at least 33 knots (61 km/h) and should use oil-fired boilers and steam turbines as a means of achieving this. This resulted in a larger ship to provide the required doubling of installed power over their predecessors, but also pushed the design to the limits of capability of contemporary technology. As a result, the Tribals were severely compromised and a somewhat retrograde step after the excellent River class; they were lightly built and proved to be fragile in service. More alarmingly however, they were only provided with 90 tons of bunkerage, and with high fuel consumption resulting from the unheard of power of 12,500 shp (9,300 kW), they were very uneconomical and had a severely limited radius of action; Afridi and Amazon once used 9.5 tons of oil each simply to raise steam for a three-mile (5 km) return journey to a fuel depot.
Design details were left to the individual builders, as was Royal Navy practice at the time for destroyers. As a result, no two were alike and there was considerable heterogeneity of detail and appearance, Most noticeably the number of funnels varied from three, in Cossack and Ghurka, to six in Viking; the latter, with two single and two pairs of funnels becoming the only six-funneled destroyer ever built. With a light mainmast aft, they were the first British destroyers to have two masts.
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