History | |
---|---|
United Kingdom | |
Name | HMS Euphrates |
Ordered | 1865 |
Builder | Laird Brothers of Birkenhead |
Yard number | 325 |
Launched | 24 November 1866 |
Fate |
|
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Euphrates-class troopship |
Type | Troopship |
Displacement | 6,211 tons |
Tons burthen | 4,173 tons BM |
Length | 360 ft (109.7 m) (overall) |
Beam | 49 ft 1.5 in (15.0 m) |
Depth of hold | 22 ft 4 in (6.81 m) |
Installed power |
|
Propulsion |
|
Sail plan | Barque |
Speed | 15 kn (28 km/h) |
Armament | Three 4-pounder guns |
HMS Euphrates was an iron-hulled troopship of the Euphrates class. She was designed for the transport of British troops to India, and launched in the River Mersey on 24 November 1866 by Laird Brothers of Birkenhead. She was the fourth and last Royal Navy ship to bear the name.
Euphrates was one of five iron-hulled vessels of the Euphrates class. All five were built to a design of 360 ft overall length by about 49 ft breadth, although Malabar was very slightly smaller than the rest of the class. They had a single screw, a speed of 14 knots, one funnel, a barque-rig sail plan, three 4-pounder guns, and a white painted hull. Her bow was a "ram bow" which projected forward below the waterline.
She was operated by the Royal Navy to transport up to 1,200 troops and family from Portsmouth to Bombay. The return trip via the Suez canal normally took 70 days. Her two-cylinder single-expansion steam engines were replaced in 1873 with a more efficient but less powerful 2-cylinder compound-expansion engine, giving her a reduced top speed under steam of about 11 knots (20 km/h). [1]
On 28 February 1870, she was damaged in a collision with the British merchant ship Bates Family at Bombay, India. [2] On 19 December 1883, she ran aground off Gibraltar. She was refloated the next day. [3] On 6 February 1892, she collided with the German steamer Gutenfels in the Suez Canal. Gutenfels suffered several broken plates and some damage to her upperworks. [4]
She was sold to I Cohen in Portsmouth on 23 November 1894 and resold to Henry Castle and Son for breaking in August 1895. [1]
HMS Minotaur was the lead ship of the Minotaur-class armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy during the 1860s. Minotaur took nearly four years between her launching and commissioning because she was used for evaluations of her armament and different sailing rigs.
HMS Iron Duke was the last of four Audacious-class central battery ironclads built for the Royal Navy in the late 1860s. Completed in 1871, the ship was briefly assigned to the Reserve Fleet as a guardship in Ireland, before she was sent out to the China Station as its flagship. Iron Duke returned four years later and resumed her duties as a guardship. She accidentally rammed and sank her sister ship, Vanguard, in a heavy fog in mid-1875 and returned to the Far East in 1878. The ship ran aground twice during this deployment and returned home in 1883. After a lengthy refit, Iron Duke was assigned to the Channel Fleet in 1885 and remained there until she again became a guardship in 1890. The ship was converted into a coal hulk a decade later and continued in that role until 1906 when she was sold for scrap and broken up.
HMS Royal Oak was a Prince Consort-class armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in the 1860s. The lead ship of her class, she is sometimes described as a half-sister to the other three ships because of her different engine and boiler arrangements. Like her sisters, she was converted into an ironclad from a wooden ship of the line that was still under construction.
HMS Serapis was a Euphrates-class troopship commissioned for the transport of troops to and from India. She was launched in the Thames on 26 September 1866 from the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company at Leamouth, London and was the third Royal Navy ship to bear the name. She was sold in 1894.
HMS Audacious was the lead ship of the Audacious-class ironclads built for the Royal Navy in the late 1860s. They were designed as second-class ironclads suitable for use on foreign stations and the ship spent the bulk of her career on the China Station. She was decommissioned in 1894 and hulked in 1902 for use as a training ship. The ship was towed to Scapa Flow after the beginning of the First World War to be used as a receiving ship and then to Rosyth after the war ended. Audacious was sold for scrap in 1929.
HMS Monarch was the first seagoing British warship to carry her guns in turrets, and the first British warship to carry guns of 12-inch (300 mm) calibre.
HMS Vixen was an armoured composite gunboat, the only ship of her class, and the third ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name. She was the first Royal Navy vessel to have twin propellers.
HMS Jumna was a Euphrates-class troopship launched at Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company at Hebburn on 24 September 1866. She was the third vessel of the Royal Navy to carry the name.
HMS Rattler was a 9-gun steam screw sloop of the Royal Navy, and one of the first British warships to be completed with screw propulsion. She was originally ordered as a paddle wheel 4-gun steam vessel from Sheerness Dockyard on 12 March 1841. She was reordered on 24 February 1842 as a propeller type 9-gun sloop from HM Royal Dockyard, Sheerness, as a new vessel. William Symonds had redesigned the ship as a screw propeller driven vessel.
HMS Valorous was one of two 16-gun, steam-powered Magicienne-class second-class paddle frigates built for the Royal Navy in the 1850s. Commissioned in 1853 she played a small role in the Crimean War of 1854–1855 and was sold for scrap in 1891.
HMS Trident was an iron paddle sloop built for the Royal Navy by Ditchburn & Mare in 1845 at Leamouth, London. She served in the Mediterranean, off West Africa and in the South Atlantic, and was broken up in 1866.
HMS Marlborough was a first-rate three-decker 131-gun screw ship built for the Royal Navy in 1855. She was begun as a sailing ship of the line, but was completed to a modified design and converted to steam on the stocks, and launched as a wooden steam battleship.
HMS Crocodile was a Euphrates-class troopship launched into the Thames from the Blackwall Yard of Money Wigram and Sons on 7 January 1867. She was the fourth and last vessel of the Royal Navy to carry the name.
HMS Malabar was a Euphrates-class troopship launched in 1866, and the fifth ship of the Royal Navy to employ the name. She was designed to carry troops between the United Kingdom and British India, and was employed in that role for most of her life. She became the base ship at the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda in 1897. She was renamed Terror in 1901 and sold in 1918. Her name was later used as the stone frigate to which shore personnel in Bermuda were enrolled, and later for Her Majesty's Naval Base Bermuda, after the 1950s, when the dockyard was reduced to a base.
The Euphrates class was a five-ship class of iron screw troopships built for the Royal Navy during the 1860s. They were used for carrying troops to India, with two of them being later hulked and surviving into the early 20th Century.
SS Erinpura was an E-class ocean liner of the British India Steam Navigation Company, built in 1911. She was the first British India ship built for Eastern service to be fitted with radio. She served in both World Wars. Enemy action in 1943 sank her in the Mediterranean Sea with great loss of life.
HMS Endymion was a 21-gun Ister-class wooden screw frigate, the third of four ships of this name to serve in the Royal Navy. She was the last wooden frigate built at Deptford Dockyard. She was commissioned in 1866 and spent much of her service based at Malta. In 1869–70 she sailed around the world as part of a Flying Squadron. She remained in front-line service until 1874.
HMS Dragon was a Doterel-class sloop of the Royal Navy, built at Devonport Dockyard and launched on 30 May 1878. She served in the East Indies, including the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882, and the suppression of slavery. She was sold for breaking in 1892.
The H[onourable] C[ompany's] S[hip] Hugh Lindsay was a paddle steamer built in Bombay in 1829 for the naval arm of the British East India Company (EIC) and the first steamship to be built in Bombay. She pioneered the mail route between Suez and Bombay. Hugh Lindsay was lost in the Persian Gulf on 18 August 1865.
Bywell Castle was a passenger and cargo ship that was built in 1869 by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, Jarrow, County Durham. She was involved in the Princess Alice Disaster in September 1878 in which more than 600 people died. She disappeared in February 1883 whilst on a voyage from Alexandria, Egypt to Hull, Yorkshire, United Kingdom.