HMS Collingwood here shows her obvious derivation from the Devastation model. Differences included the larger size (325'/10,000 tons), barbette mounting of main armament, and slightly higher freeboard. One of the invisible differences was her powerful 3-cylinder compound engines developing 17 knots on trials, making her the fastest battleship in the Royal Navy at the time. Other features included electric lighting throughout and an 18" compound armor belt. Her main battery was four 12"/25 40-ton BLRs; secondary armament was six 6" BLR. Collingwood led a long and useful life, being renovated in 1892 and sold out of the service in 1909.
Click here for a scholarly disquisition on barbette mountings. The barbette was a craze which took hold of the world's navies in the 1880s and remained through the early 1890s. Barbettes quite similar to Collingwood's were employed to mount the 13.5" main guns on the Royal Sovereign class battleships, Britain's first true pre-dreadnoughts, laid down in 1889 and commissioned starting in 1892.
Specifications for the Collingwood:
Dimensions: 325' x 68' x 26'4" Displacement: 9,500 tons std. Armament: (4) 12"/25 Mark Vw (2x2), (6) 6"/46 Mk X , and (12) 6-pdr guns; (4) 18" torpedo tubes. Armor: Compound type. Belt 18"/8"; barbettes 11½"/10", conning tower 12"/10", bulkheads 16"/7", battery screens 6", CT 12"/2", deck 3"/2". Propulsion: Coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) Humphreys compound inverted engines developing 7,000 hp, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 15½ kts. normal; 16.8 kts. f.d. Crew: 498.
Metric Specifications:
Dimensions: 99m x 21m x 8.03m Displacement: 9,500 tons std. Armament: (4) 305 mm/25 Mark Vw (2x2), (6) 152 mm/46 Mk X, and (12) 6-pdr guns; (4) 45 cm torpedo tubes. Armor: Compound type. Belt 457/203 mm; barbettes 292/254 mm, conning tower 305/254 mm, bulkheads 406/178 mm, battery screens 152 mm, CT 305/51 mm, deck 76/51 mm. Propulsion: Coal-fired cylindrical boilers; (2) Humphreys compound inverted engines developing 7,200 kW, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 28.7 km/hr normal; 31.1 km/hr f.d. Crew: 498.
Seen above, Collingwood in quarter view at her mooring soon after commissioning in 1884. A very successful ship, Collingwood had a better balanced look than most warships spawned in the "Era of Uncertainty," and a combination of technologies (particularly steam engines) that worked well enough together to be reassuring. The Royal Navy had not laid down a real class of ironclads since the Audacious group in 1869. Now Collingwood served as the model for a class of five battleships, the Admiral class: Howe, Rodney, Anson, Camperdown, and Benbow. If not identical, these six ships were at least homogeneous, marking a big change from the many one-offs and spinster sisters of the experimental period, which had lasted more than 20 years at her commissioning.
In an illustration from The Graphic, Collingwood heads up the starboard column of the Royal Navy as the royal yacht Victoria and Albert passes in review, Aug. 4, 1889. Aboard the paddle-wheel yacht is Victoria's ferrocorrazatophile grandson*, the newly crowned Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, whose naval adventurism will soon have all England in a tizzy. Enlarge
* Ferrocorrazatophile = battleship-loving (from Italian ferro, iron + corrazata, Ital. armored ship, + phile, Gr. friend.)
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