HMS Forte leaving Simonstown, South Africa, c. 1900 | |
History | |
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United Kingdom | |
Name | HMS Forte |
Builder | Chatham Dockyard |
Launched | 9 December 1893 |
Commissioned | 5 November 1895 [1] |
Decommissioned | 1913 |
Fate | Sold 2 April 1914 for breaking up |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Astraea-class cruiser |
Displacement | 4,360 tons loaded |
Length | |
Beam | 49 ft 6 in (15.09 m) |
Draught | 19 ft (5.8 m) |
Propulsion | |
Speed |
|
Range | 7,000 nmi (13,000 km; 8,100 mi) |
Complement | 44 |
Armament | |
Armour |
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HMS Forte was an Astraea-class cruiser of the Royal Navy launched on 9 December 1893. [2] She was constructed under the Naval Defence Act of 1889 along with several other Astraea-class cruisers. [3] Forte was eventually decommissioned in 1913.
HMS Forte served on the Cape and West African stations. She visited Sierra Leone and The Gambia in early January 1901. [4] In December 1902 she was reported to be in East Africa, when she took the British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain and his wife from Mombasa to Zanzibar during their tour of British colonies. [5]
In 1908, the ship delivered such a terrible result in a gunlayer's test that a Court of Inquiry was convened, leading to the determination that Captain John Green and his officers had failed to provide sufficient training, as they had not appreciated the difficulty of the test procedure. In 1910 Green ran the cruiser aground, eliciting Their Lordships "severe displeasure for failure to comply with King's Regulations for unseamanlike manner in which the ship was navigated." [6]
In 1913 Forte was placed on the sale list and sold on 2 April 1914 for scrapping. She was the only ship of her class not to see service in the First World War.
HMS Theseus was an Edgar-class protected cruiser of the Royal Navy. The Edgars were similar but smaller versions of the Blake class. Theseus was launched at Leamouth, London in 1892 and commissioned on 14 January 1896.
HMS Gibraltar, was an Edgar-class cruiser launched in 1892 for service in the Royal Navy. She was built and engineered by Messrs Napier of Glasgow. Of 7,700 loaded displacement, she was coal-fired with four double-ended cylindrical boilers driving two shafts. She could make 20 knots (37 km/h) with forced draught and 18 knots (33 km/h) with natural draught. She was a very good sea boat and an exceptional steamer.
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HMS Pegasus was one of 11 Pelorus-class protected cruisers ordered for the Royal Navy in 1893 under the Spencer Program and based on the earlier Pearl class. The class were fitted with a variety of different boilers, most of which were not entirely satisfactory, and by 1914, four ships had been withdrawn. They had all been condemned in 1904 but were reprieved and remained in service, with scrapping proposed in 1915.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Edward Madden, 1st Baronet,, was a Royal Navy officer who served during the First World War as Chief of the Staff to Sir John Jellicoe in the Grand Fleet from 1914 to 1916 and as Second-in-Command of the fleet under Sir David Beatty from 1916 to 1919. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet after the war and served as First Sea Lord in the late 1920s. In that role, in order to avoid an arms race, he accepted parity with the United States in the form of 50 cruisers defending his position on the basis that he only actually had 48 cruisers anyway.
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HMS Astraea was an Astraea-class second class cruiser of the Royal Navy. She was built towards the end of the nineteenth century, and survived to serve in the First World War.
The Astraea class was an eight ship class of protected cruisers built for the Royal Navy during the 1890s. The ships served on a number of foreign stations during their careers, particularly in the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and around the Cape of Good Hope. Already obsolete by the outbreak of the First World War, most continued to see service in a variety of roles, though rarely in a front line capacity. By the end of the war the majority were being used as training or depot ships, and they were soon sold out of the service and scrapped. However, one ship, HMS Hermione, was bought by the Marine Society and used as a training ship until 1940.
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