H.M.S. Triumph & H.M.S. Swiftsure (1902)
Swiftsure, built in Britain for Chile in 1902, is seen above at battle practice with the East Asia Squadron in 1913. Bristling with 10" and 7.5" guns, she exemplifies the dash and spirit of Victorian navies in the premier age of nationalism and empire. By the 1890s a fairly standardized design of battleship had been adopted and, indeed, exported. Designed specifically for the Chilean Navy by former DNC Sir Edward Reed, Constitución and her sister Libertad were canceled by Chile when nearly complete, and rather hastily were brought into the Royal Navy to keep them from falling into Russian hands and being turned against Japan in the war then brewing. Renamed Triumph and Swiftsure after an earlier pair of center battery ironclads, they were never an easy fit into the British service. Ammunition had to be specially manufactured for their 7-inch guns, unique among British warships. Neither their armor protection nor their watertight subdivision were up to Royal Navy standards. Swiftsure was built at Elswick, Triumph by Vickers Ltd.
Triumph and Swiftsure were immediately identifiable by the pair of enormous cranes between their funnels, by their elaborate bow scrollwork, and their rather slender, spindly smokestacks; other British battleships had a uniform look distinctly lacking these features. Their proportions too were odd; they had been specified to fit into the main Chilean dockyard at Talcahuano; this necessitated the long, narrow form and shallow draft. Swiftsure, in fact, had problems with structural weakness of the hull and had to have several tons of stiffening added after being in service some months. On the plus side, the ships were equipped with balanced rudders and handled beautifully. They were also the fastest pre-dreadnought battleships ever built.
Swiftsure at Malta in 1907. Enlarge
These vessels were examples of "Second Class Battleships," with a 10-inch rather than a 12-inch main armament. The theory was that, with their shallower draft and higher speed, they and could operate as spearheads of cruiser squadrons in colonial areas, or do coast defense work. Because of their very heavy secondary armament (fourteen 7.5-inchers, 20 small quick-firing guns, and two 18-inch torpedo tubes) and great length (479 feet), Triumph and Swiftsure did not fit the bill very well.
Still, they were fast and powerful units and did their duty in wartime; the photo above shows off the ships' distinctive profile. Other Second Class Battleships were HMS Renown of 1897, HMS Barfleur of 1893, the Russian Peresviet class, and the U.S. battleships Maine and Texas of 1895. Triumph and Swiftsure compared favorably to all of these, particularly in terms of speed and maneuverability.
Both ships spent most of their early careers in Asia, or as it was called in the service, the China Station. This assignment was home to Second Class Battleships; they were in company with the Barfleur and Centurion and the light battleships of the Canopus class. China played host to competing flotillas of western -- and Japanese -- warships that enforced the terms of China's dismemberment, including, after 1901, fleets of gunboats that patrolled her major rivers, enforcing treaty rights of foreign individuals and corporations picking the bones of the Celestial Empire.
Plans & Specifications
Specifications for the Triumph and Swiftsure:
Dimensions: 436' x 71'2" x 24'8" OA length: 479'9" Displacement: 11,985 tons. Armament: (4) 10"/45 Mk VII (2x2); (14) 7.5"/50 Mk IV; (14) 14-pdr QF, (2) 12-pdr QF, and (4) 6-pdr QF guns; (2) 18" torpedo tubes. Armor: 7"/3 belt, 10"/2" barbettes, 6" bulkheads, 10"/8" turrets, 7" battery and casemates, 11" conning tower, 3"/1" decks. Fuel capacity: 840 tons of coal, std; 2,048 tons maximum. Propulsion: (12) large-tube Yarrow boilers; (2) inverted vertical triple expansion engines developing 12,500 IHP, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 19 kts (Triumph), 20.87 kts (Swiftsure). Endurance: 6,210 nm @ 10 kts. Crew: 732 peactime, 803 wartime.
Metric specs:
132.9m x 21.64m x 7.72m OA length: 146.2m Displacement: 11,985 tons. Armament: (4) 254 mm/45 Mk VII (2x2); (14) 190.5 mm/50 Mk IV; (14) 14-pdr QF, (2) 12-pdr QF, and (4) 6-pdr QF guns; (2) 457-mm torpedo tubes. Armor, in millimeters: 178/76 belt, 254/51 barbettes, 152 bulkheads, 254/203 turrets, 178 battery and casemates, 279 conning tower, 76/25.4 decks. Fuel capacity: 840 tons of coal, std; 2,048 tons maximum. Propulsion: (12) large-tube Yarrow boilers; (2) inverted vertical triple expansion engines developing 9,321.25 kW, shafted to twin screw. Speed: 35 km/hr (Triumph), 38.65 km/hr (Swiftsure). Endurance: 11,501 km @ 18.5 km/hr. Crew: 732 peactime, 803 wartime.
Death and Honor in the Sands:
The Dardanelles and Gallipoli
Both ships began the War in the Far East, where they were already stationed. Triumph joined Japanese forces to capture the German colony at Qingdao and hunt for the elusive cruiser squadron of Graf von Spee, who was already voyaging trans-Pacific en route to the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands. Early in 1915, both sisters were assigned to support the Gallipoli campaign -- a famous graveyard of ANZACs, old battleships, and military careers. The forcing of the Dardanelles by British naval might to supply the Russian Empire, was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, who in 1911-1915 was First Lord of the Admiralty, brilliant and rather full of himself. Already implicated in the Lusitania disaster, the "Live Bait Squadron," and several less well-known cock-ups, Churchill was still bubbling with military projects. Despite his earlier escapades, nothing had prepared the public for the magnitude of the fiasco Churchill was brewing up in Turkey. On March 18, 1915, 16 British and French battleships spearheaded by the superdreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth and battlecruiser Inflexible (but otherwise consisting of pre-dreadnoughts) set out to force the straits and met with disaster. The Turks, aided by their German advisors, had mined and extensively obstructed the Dardanelles aproaching the Narrows (see chart). The improvised Allied minesweeping effort (using hired North Sea trawlers) fell to pieces as soon as the Turks opened fire on the boats, but Adm. de Robeck (center) sent in the fleet anyway. The bombardment of the forts began well enough, but after a turn on the firing line each 4-ship squadron of the fleet had to turn about in the restricted waterway. Unbeknownst to the Allies, the turnaround course led past 26 mines freshly sowed by the German-built minelayer Nusret. While converted trawlers conducted a hit-or-miss sweep of the channel, this field near the Asian bank remained undetected and unswept. The first day of the attack, three battleships were sunk by mines, and three more seriously damaged by mines and shellfire; the Allied fleet withdrew in some confusion, mistakenly attributing the losses to torpedoes or shellfire.
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Chart by David Lindroth, from Robert K. Massie, Castles of Steel (Presidio, 2003), 459.
De Robeck subsequently had buyer's remorse and requested backup from land forces. Bowing to reality, Churchill and Kitchener, the War Minister, revised their strategy to include a land invasion through Gallipoli. Six weeks later the British landed 5 divisions of Empire troops on the peninsula. Though the ANZAC and Irish troops fought heroically, they were soon stymied by the challenging terrain and the fierce opposition of the Turks, ably commanded by Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
Well-supplied Ottoman troops occupied the high ground before the invaders could push far inland. For all their efforts over the better part of a year, the British barely budged off their beach-heads, paying dearly for every yard of soil gained, just as on the Western Front. Finally the troops (grown to 14 divisions for the Allies) were evacuated under fire in December 1915-January 1916; unlike most aspects of the campaign, the evacuation unexpectedly ran like clockwork. Total casualties for the campaign came to around 550,000 (42,000 killed) for the Allies and 700,000 for the Turkish defenders. It was a painful loss (and loss of faith in the Empire) for Australia and New Zealand. Kemal Pasha became a Turkish national hero and, after the humiliating defeat of Ottoman arms in 1918, went on to found the modern, secular Turkish state. For his achievements he was named Atatûrk -- "father of the Turks" -- and elected president and prime minister almost continuously from 1921 to 1937.
Allied battleships were present in strength throughout the Gallipoli campaign: escorting the troopships, covering landings, relentlessly bombarding enemy batteries and positions (left: Swiftsure at the Dardanelles), and falling victim to plunging shellfire and hurtling torpedoes. Such was the fate of the Triumph, torpedoed while bombarding Gaba Tepe on May 25, 1915. U-21 drew a careful bead on the slowly moving battleship, then put one fish into her starboard side. The torpedo penetrated the ship's nets, which were deployed (above), with no trouble at all. A tremendous explosion followed. Luckily she was closed up; the sub's periscope had been sighted and all watertight doors had been closed moments before the missile hit. Triumph assumed a severe list to port, then hung at 30 degrees for almost half an hour, allowing most of her crew to escape before she turned turtle, floating upside down for another half-hour. Then came a loud noise, said by some to be an internal explosion. The great ship plunged to the bottom in a welter of foam, sinking in a depth of 30 fathoms (55m).
78 were killed in the sinking, or just under 10% of the crew. The U-21 went on to bag another prestigious prize, HMS Majestic, two days later. Today, 95 years later, the Triumph's weed-grown hulk is a popular diving destination, just offshore in deep water on the Aegean side of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Switftsure survived the Great War -- in the thick of it in the Dardanelles and later in the North Atlantic -- only to be sold for scrap in 1920.
A Triumphant Photo Album
Swiftsure's elaborate bow scroll, designed when she was to be the Chilean flagship Libertad.
Triumph as completed, with elaborate bow scroll, later removed.
Triumph's torpedo nets spread. On a medium roll, she would dip the muzzles of her long 7.5" guns if they were trained outboard.
A handsome 1:700 model of Triumph, built by Christian Bruer.
When Churchill published his memoir of the WWI years in 1922, John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, "Winston has written a book about himself and called it The World Crisis!" Churchill was forced to resign over the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, which haunted him the rest of his long and illustrious career.
Narrows Attack chart courtesy Robert K. Massey, from Castles of Steel, © 2003, Presidio Press (a Random House imprint), p. 459. The chart is of an excellence matching the rest of the book!
