H.M.S. Albemarle (1903)
HMS Albemarle of the Duncan class -- a second class of "Admirals" designed by Sir William White as a fast battleship type, in part to "reply" to new Russian ships then under construction. The Duncans traded a good deal of protection for an extra knot of speed -- 2" of belt armor, to be exact. High-pressure (300 psi) Yarrow boilers and twin 9100+ HP 4-cyl. triple expansion engines kicked the ships along at 19 kts. As a reply, this 6-ship class was overkill compared to the 3 Russian ships to which they replied; but no matter. A certain amount of waste was inherent in the Royal Navy's doctrine that Britain's fleet must outnumber by 3:2 the combined strength of the next two largest fleets afloat. Quite aside from their utility as fighting ships, the Duncans would be of interest as being one of the last of many designs by White who, as DNC from 1885-1902, more than any other defined the Pre-Dreadnought Era. The Duncans were clearly an evolution of the Majestic type designed by White some 10 years earlier, but already with a more modern profile. Gone are the enormous ventilator cowls of the older Victorian vessels. The anchors are snugged in their hawseholes as in more recent ships, eliminating the clutter of anchor chains and "anchor beds" seen in earlier vessels. The funnels adhere to the arrangement reached on the Canopus, oblong but set on opposed axes. The secondary battery is cantilevered over the sides, another of White's trademarks. See schematic, below.
Specifications for the Duncan class:
Dimensions: 429' x 75'6" x 27'3" (131m x 23m x 8.3m) Displacement: 14,000 tons. Armament: (4) 12"/40 Mk IX (30.5 cm), 2x2; (12) 6"/45 QF Mk VII in casemates (15.25 cm); (12) 12-pdr and (6) 3-pdr. guns; (2) Maxim MG; (4) 18" submerged torpedo tubes (450 mm). Armor: Krupp Cemented (KC) type. 7"/5"/3" belt (178/127/76 mm), turrets 6" (153 mm), conning tower 12" (305 mm), barbettes 11" (279 mm), decks 2½" (63.5 mm). Fuel capacity: 900 tons of coal std, 2,000 tons maximum. Propulsion: 24 Belleville boilers; (2) 4-cyl inverted vertical triple expansion engines developing 18,000 HP, shafted to twin screw. Maximum speed: 19.4 kts (Montagu) to 20.1 kts (Duncan). Crew: 750 normal; 778 as flagship. Initial cost: Slightly over £1M apiece at 1901 values.
Ships in class: Russell · Albemarle · Montagu · Duncan · Cornwallis · Exmouth
The Duncans had a varied history after joining the fleet in 1901-2. Sometimes those purposeful ram bows sliced into something harder than salt water. HMS Montagu ran aground on Lundy Island off Bristol in 1906, in thick fog. It turns out the ship's officers were enthusiastically playing with their new wireless set and 11 miles off course. The captain thought she had fetched up on the mainland north of Bristol, and got in a shouting match with the lighthouse keeper over his correct position! The ship was badly holed and flooded after running over a granite reef at 11 knots, but at first appeared salvageable. After valiant attempts to get her off, it was determined that her keel had broken and she was declared a total loss. The wreck sold for £4,250, while the ship had cost £1.1 million to build 3 years before. Montagu's captain and navigation officer were court-martialed and drummed out of the service for their carelessness. Salvage operations continued until 1922. Nowadays the wreck site is one of several attractions for divers visiting Lundy, a granite mass in the Bristol Channel which boasts a number of shipwrecks and much beautiful marine life. 12" shells and 3-foot piles of armor plating still litter the floor of Shutter Cove where Montagu was dismantled. The stairs and apparatus constructed for the salvage remain part of the scenery at the cove.
The remaining Duncans were still in commission at war's outbreak. Albemarle was dispatched to the Dardanelles in 1915 but ran into ferocious weather which washed her entire bridge away, making a refit imperative. She spent the rest of the war as a guard ship in Murmansk, Russia. Duncan saw duty in the Adriatic and Greece. Exmouth (her stern gallery pictured at right) also supported the Allied effort in the Balkans until transferred to convoy troops from India in 1917. The remaining two sister ships were casualties of war. Cornwallis was torpedoed twice and sunk off Malta in 1917, after rendering yeoman service in the Dardanelles campaign. U-232 claimed the kill. Thanks to the ship's innate stability and prompt action by her commanding officer, she took more than an hour to fill and all but 15 of her crew were rescued. Russell was less fortunate in the end, though she too had a distinguished war record compiled before meeting her doom. She saw duty with the Channel Fleet and the Grand Fleet early in the War, then became a divisional flagship in the Gallipoli effort. While steaming off Malta on April 26, 1916 she hit two mines in quick succession, setting the stern of the ship ablaze. 27 officers and 98 men were lost, although she too took considerable time sinking.
The surviving Duncans, indeed virtually all of the predreadnoughts extant at war's end, were sold to the shipbreakers between 1920-1923. Soon after the Washington Treaty for Naval Disarmament was signed in Feb. 1923, the pre-dreadnoughts were joined at the breakers by the dreadnought battleships which had replaced them. Aghast at the slaughter and waste of WWI (and in Europe, deeply in debt for conducting the war), the world made a well-intentioned effort at abandoning war for pleasure and profit. Within 15 years some signatories would be cheating aggressively on the Treaty limitations, but after completing vessels already nearly completed, it placed a near-moratorium on new battleship construction until the mid-30s. Britain built the Nelson and Rodney (commissioned 1926) and modernized its best legacy vessels from the Grand Fleet. The next new British battleship construction would be the King George Vs, which were built to treaty standards, making them by definition wet, cramped ships. The last Royal Navy battleship was HMS Vanguard, armed with a leftover stash of 15" guns made for 2 WWI battlecruisers which had been converted to aircraft carriers while still under construction. Vanguard was completed in 1946, with a balanced twin-turret layout like the classic Queen Elizabeth superdreadnoughts. Too late for fighting to victory in WWII, Vanguard was used as a ship of state during the immediate postwar era, hosting the royal family on a goodwill trip to South Africa in 1950. It was in this time that Princess Elizabeth determined to marry Prince Philip, despite the rather anxious probing of her family. Within 2 years of the wedding, Elizabeth was herself crowned queen.
An Albemarle Album
The Exmouth steams purposefully past the Citadel at Malta.
Hibernia, riding calmly at anchor.
Albemarle, cleared for action during the 1905 Mediterranean Fleet maneuvers, while serving as the flagship of the Rear Admiral - Mediterranean. There can be no mistaking her purposeful bow slicing through the waters: this is a crack ship of the Royal Navy and she means business!