HMS Spiteful (1899)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Spiteful.
History
United Kingdom (1801–1922)
Name: HMS Spiteful
Builder: Palmer's, Jarrow
Laid down: 12 January 1898
Launched: 11 January 1899
Identification:
  • P 73 (to 1915)
  • D 91 (to 1918)
  • D 76 (to 1920)
Fate: sold for scrap in 1920
General characteristics
Class and type: Spiteful-class torpedo boat destroyer, re-classified as B-class in 1913
Displacement: 400 long tons (406 t)[1]
Length: 219 ft 6 in (66.9 m)[1]
Beam: 21 ft (6.4 m)[2]
Draught: 9 ft 1 in (2.77 m)[1]
Propulsion:
Speed: 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph)
Range: 4,000 NM (at 13.05 knots)
Complement: 63
Armament:

HMS Spiteful was a Spiteful-class torpedo boat destroyer built by Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company Ltd, Jarrow, for the Royal Navy and launched in 1899. She spent her entire career based at Portsmouth, and in 1904 became the first warship to be powered solely using fuel oil. In 1913 she was re-classified as B-class. She was sold and scrapped in 1920.

Design and construction

HMS Spiteful was one of about 60 torpedo boat destroyers built for the Admiralty between 1893 and 1900 to its specifications; she was also the 50th ship built for the Admiralty by Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company Ltd, and the 9th torpedo boat destroyer built by them.[4][5] She was laid down on 12 January 1898 at Palmer's Jarrow shipyard and launched on 11 January 1899.[6]

In common with similar Royal Navy ships of the time, her forecastle was of the "turtle-back" type with a rounded top: this design was intended to keep the forecastle clear of sea water, but in practice had the adverse effect of digging a ship's bow into the sea when it was rough, thereby making ships lose speed, besides making them "wet and uncomfortable".[7][8] Wetness was mitigated by screening across the rear of the forecastle and around the bridge, which on this type of ship was also referred to as the conning position.[9] A foremast stood behind the conning position and was fitted with a derrick.[10] Spiteful was designed to be operated by a crew of 63 officers and men, for whom the accommodation on this type of ship was "very cramped; usually the captain had a small cabin but ... other officers lived in the wardroom."[11] Three boats were carried, comprising a dinghy and two lifeboats.[12]

She was armed with a QF 12-pounder gun located immediately in front of the bridge; five QF 6-pounder guns, four of which were arranged along her sides and one towards her stern; and two 18-inch (460 mm) torpedo tubes located on deck towards the stern.[13][10] Admiralty specifications in force at the time of her construction required that she should be able to steam at 30 knots, and from this she was one of a group of torpedo boat destroyers known informally as "thirty-knotters".[14] Propulsion was by two triple expansion steam engines powered from four coal-fired Reed water-tube boilers.[3][2] In sea trials it was found that, when run at 29.9 knots, she consumed 2.3 pounds (1 kg) of coal per IHP per hour, which was considered low, and a speed of 30.371 knots was "easily maintained".[3][Fn 1] At 13.05 knots it was found that her capacity of about 116 tons (about 118 tonnes) of coal, consumed at a rate of 1.5 pounds (0.7 kg) per IHP per hour, gave her a sailing range of about 4,000 nautical miles.[3]

Torpedo boat destroyers of the thirty-knotter specification featured watertight bulkheads that enabled them to remain afloat despite damage to their hulls, which were thin and lightly built.[15] Conversely the thinness of their hulls meant that they were easily damaged by careless handling.[15][Fn 2] Otherwise,

[t]he best advertisement for [the thirty-knotters] lay in the fact that they were worked very hard during [the First World War] and, though most of them were twenty years old by 1919, they remained efficient. This [also] speaks well for their builders ...
— T.D. Manning, The British Destroyer, 1961[15]

Ships of her type were originally painted black, but she would have been painted grey in about 1916, from which point she would have had her pendant number painted on her bows.[12][Fn 3] She and her sister ship Peterel, also built by Palmer's and launched later the same year, formed the Spiteful class.[13][1][18]

Service history

Spiteful always remained within the vicinity of the British Isles.[13] From 10 July to 3 August 1900 she was engaged in a naval exercise conducted in the Irish Sea, during which she was deemed to have been put out of action.[19] From 11 January 1901 to 24 February 1902 at the latest she was under the command of Douglas Nicholson, who later became a rear admiral and then a vice admiral.[20][21][22] In February 1901 she ran aground near the Isle of Wight, damaging her propellors, and was taken to Portsmouth dockyard for overhaul.[23] On 23 October the same year, while off the north-eastern coast of England, she had a collision with her sister ship Peterel, in which her stem was twisted and her bow "partly torn away".[24][Fn 4] In 1905 she was in collision with a barge carrying bags of cement while steaming at "about 20 knots":[26] damage to her bow was severe, but that damage was not greater was attributed to her "light build".[26] In 1907 it was reported that a fire had broken out on board, with fatal consequences.[27] On 5 August, while the ship was raising steam, fuel oil was released under pressure from a disconnected burner, causing flames to enter the boiler room: two members of the crew were killed and two others were injured. [28][29] The event prompted the Admiralty to issue new instructions on the handling of fuel oil in its ships, particularly after overhaul.[29]

A model of HMS Spiteful, built in about 1904

In 1913 Spiteful was re-classified as a B-class vessel.[13] In June the following year, one month before the outbreak of World War I, the Royal Navy's Navy List records that Spiteful was based at Portsmouth as a tender for HMS Vernon, the Admiralty's torpedo training school, where her "Chief Artificer Engineer" was based, rather than aboard along with her commander.[30] From August 1914 she was listed as still based at Portsmouth, but no longer as a tender for Vernon, although her Chief Artificer Engineer remained there.[31] On 6 September 1916 she sighted a German submarine off Cape Barfleur, in the English Channel, forcing it to dive: Spiteful was described as being part of the "Portsmouth Flotilla" at the time.[32] Thereafter the Navy List only noted her existence, until in January 1917 she was listed as part of the Portsmouth Local Defence Flotilla.[33] From April 1918 the Navy List reverted to noting only her existence.[34] From June to December 1918 she was again listed as part of the Portsmouth Local Defence Flotilla, but also as a tender for "HMS Victory", a shore-based training establishment there.[35][36][37] From January to April 1919 she was listed only as based at Portsmouth, but in May that year she was listed as being based there without an officer in command.[38][39][40][Fn 5] She did not appear in the Navy List again until January 1920, when she was listed as "To Be Sold".[42] This occurred on 14 September 1920, and she was broken up at Hayes' yard, Porthcawl.[1][17]

Fuel oil

Two stokers belonging to HMS Spiteful inside one of the ventilation cowls for the boiler room in 1901. The ship's name can be seen on their cap ribbons.

In 1904 Spiteful was instrumental in the Royal Navy's adoption of fuel oil as a source of power in place of coal: in July that year the journal Scientific American described her as "the first warship to be so equipped."[43][Fn 6] Her boilers were modified to burn fuel oil as part of ongoing experiments and comparative trials were carried out with her sister ship Peterel burning coal, in which Spiteful performed best.[49][50] Problems with the production of smoke were surmounted so that using oil produced no more smoke than coal, and it was found that the ship's company could be reduced by 10 or more men, since fewer stokers were required.[43][Fn 7] In June 1906 the same journal reported that Spiteful was being used by the Admiralty to train engine-room crews in the operation of oil-burning equipment.[52]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ In this trial "it was desired to keep the speed as little in excess of 30 knots as possible."[3]
  2. ↑ The reason for the emphasis on speed and lightness was illustrated somewhat later when, "[i]n 1912, [Admiral] Fisher wrote to [Winston] Churchill, 'What you do want is the super-swift – all [fuelled by] oil – and don’t fiddle about armour; it really is so very silly! There is only one defence and that is speed!'"[16]
  3. ↑ Spiteful's pendant number until 1915 was P 73, after which it was D 91 until 1918, when it was changed again to D 76.[17]
  4. ↑ The US Office of Naval Intelligence reported that Spiteful collided with a ship named "Petrel" while on service with the "reserve fleet".[24] While there was no Royal Navy ship named Petrel, this is clearly an error for "Peterel": compare Office of Naval Intelligence 1900, p. 42. The Reserve Fleet consisted of ships not in active service. Nicholson was similarly unfortunate in his next command, of HMS Dove.[25]
  5. ↑ A supplement of January 1919 lists her among vessels at their home port of Portsmouth "temporarily".[41]
  6. ↑ Merchant and smaller naval vessels had previously used fuel oil, but, prior to Spiteful, the most advanced systems in warships burned coal and oil together: experiments using only oil had previously been made using HMS Surly but these were unsatisfactory.[44] Retired Royal Navy captain T.D. Manning wrote in 1961 that "[t]he dense clouds of smoke caused by the liquid fuel [used in the experiments on Spiteful] were a great drawback and serious experiments were discontinued for some years."[13] However, research completed in 2003 by W.M. Brown offers a different view: a system burning only oil was developed by the Royal Navy and "was granted a secret patent in June 1904. First tried at sea in the destroyer Spiteful during the winter of 1904–05, with her coal-burning sister ship Peterel going through the same manoeuvres as a control, Spiteful clearly demonstrated the superiority of burning oil in destroyers."[45] In the same year William Palmer, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, wrote that "experiments with oil fuel have continued without a day's intermission and I think it can be accurately stated that in no country has greater attention been given to this subject or experiments been more exhaustive."[45][46] From 1905, almost all major Royal Navy warships used "dual firing", in which oil was sprayed onto coal, and the same system was adopted for its ships under construction.[45] Brown attributes stories of oil-fired ships producing dense clouds of smoke to "careless writers",[47] and indicates that the complete obsolescence of coal in warships of the Royal Navy was delayed not by problems in the implementation of oil-firing but by the need to secure adequate supplies of oil.[48] Dahl 2001, pp. 51–2, supports the latter assertion. Ongoing developments in the use of fuel oil by the Royal Navy in 1908 are described at Anon. 1908b, p. 713.
  7. ↑ "Moving [coal] from shore to ship, and aboard ship, was dirty and strenuous work that required extensive man-power. As Churchill noted, 'the ordeal of coaling ship exhausted the whole ship’s company. In wartime it robbed them of their brief period of rest; it subjected everyone to extreme discomfort.' It was virtually impossible to refuel at sea, meaning that a quarter of the fleet might be forced to put into harbor [sic] coaling at any one time. Providing the fleet with coal was the greatest logistical headache of the age. ... [Oil] had double the thermal content of coal so that boilers could be smaller and ships could travel twice as far. Greater speed was possible and oil burned with less smoke so the fleet would not reveal its presence as quickly. Oil could be stored in tanks anywhere, allowing more efficient design of ships, and it could be transferred through pipes without reliance on stokers, reducing manning. Refueling [sic] at sea was feasible, which provided greater flexibility."[51]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Gardiner 1979, p. 96.
  2. 1 2 Cocker 1981, p. 15.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Office of Naval Intelligence 1900, p. 42.
  4. ↑ Cocker 1981, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Anon. 1899, p. 475.
  6. ↑ Gardiner 1979, p. 96; "Destroyers before 1918". battleships-cruisers.co.uk. n.d. Archived from the original on 22 May 2016. Retrieved 27 November 2016.; Anon. 1899, p. 475; Hurd 1914, p. 98.
  7. ↑ Cocker 1981, pp. 14–8.
  8. ↑ Manning 1961, pp. 33, 39.
  9. ↑ Manning 1961, p. 24.
  10. 1 2 Cocker 1981, p. 17.
  11. ↑ Manning 1961, pp. 34, 45.
  12. 1 2 Manning 1961, p. 34.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 Manning 1961, p. 45.
  14. ↑ Manning 1961, pp. 39–46.
  15. 1 2 3 Manning 1961, p. 39.
  16. ↑ Dahl 2001, p. 52.
  17. 1 2 "'Arrowsmith' List: Royal Navy WWI Destroyer Pendant Numbers". www.gwpda.org. 1997. Archived from the original on 5 May 2016. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
  18. ↑ "Destroyers before 1918". battleships-cruisers.co.uk. n.d. Retrieved 30 November 2016.
  19. ↑ Office of Naval Intelligence 1901, pp. 363–96, esp. p. 376.
  20. ↑ "Naval & military intelligence". The Times. 1 January 1901. p. 12. Retrieved 3 December 2016. (subscription required (help)).
  21. ↑ "Naval & military intelligence". The Times. 14 February 1902. p. 9. Retrieved 3 December 2016. (subscription required (help)).
  22. ↑ "Seven to Admiral Sir D.R.L. Nicholson, Royal Navy". Bonhams. 2016. Archived from the original on 3 December 2016. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  23. ↑ "Naval & military intelligence". The Times. 5 March 1901. p. 8. Retrieved 25 November 2016. (subscription required (help)).
  24. 1 2 Office of Naval Intelligence 1902, p. 78.
  25. ↑ "Naval & Military Intelligence". The Times. 11 June 1902. p. 13. Retrieved 3 December 2016. (subscription required (help)).
  26. 1 2 Anon. 1905, p. 555.
  27. ↑ Anon. 1907a, pp. 1097–8.
  28. ↑ Anon. 1907b, p. 55.
  29. 1 2 Anon. 1908a, p. 368.
  30. ↑ Admiralty 1914a, p. 376.
  31. ↑ Admiralty 1914b, p. 381a.
  32. ↑ Newbolt 1928, p. 335.
  33. ↑ Admiralty 1917, p. 17.
  34. ↑ Admiralty 1918a, p. 28.
  35. ↑ Admiralty 1918b, p. 16.
  36. ↑ Admiralty 1918c, p. 16.
  37. ↑ "Main Bases, Training Schools and RN Air Stations". www.mariners-l.co.uk. 2002. Retrieved 26 November 2016.
  38. ↑ Admiralty 1919a, p. 910.
  39. ↑ Admiralty 1919b, p. 910.
  40. ↑ Admiralty 1919c, p. 910.
  41. ↑ Admiralty 1919d, p. 20.
  42. ↑ Admiralty 1920, p. 1105f.
  43. 1 2 Anon. 1904, p. 27.
  44. ↑ Bertin 1906, pp. 166–7.
  45. 1 2 3 Brown 2003, p. 51.
  46. ↑ "Papers of William Waldegrave Palmer, second earl of Selborne". Bodleian Libraries University of Oxford. 2011. Archived from the original on 5 August 2016. Retrieved 29 November 2016.
  47. ↑ Brown 2003, p. 60.
  48. ↑ Brown 2003, pp. 47–60.
  49. ↑ Brassey 1905, p. 449.
  50. ↑ Bertin 1906, p. 167.
  51. ↑ Dahl 2001, p. 51.
  52. ↑ Anon. 1906, p. 491.

Bibliography

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