D-class destroyer (1913)


The D class as they were known from 1913 was a fairly homogeneous group of torpedo boat destroyers built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1890s. They were all constructed to the individual designs of their builder, John I. Thornycroft & Company of Chiswick, to meet Admiralty specifications. The uniting feature of the class was a top speed of and they all had two funnels.

Classification

In 1913 the nine surviving "30 knotter" vessels with two funnels were retrospectively classified by the Admiralty as the D class to provide some system to the naming of HM destroyers. In the same way those with three funnels were classified as the C class and those with four funnels as the B class. All these vessels had a distinctive "turtleback" forecastle that was intended to clear water from the bow, but actually tended to dig the bow in to anything of a sea, resulting in a very wet conning position. They were better constructed than their A-class forebears, but still were poor seaboats unable to reach top speed in anything but perfect conditions.

Design

They generally displaced 355 to 370 tons and had a length of. All were powered by triple expansion steam engines for and had coal-fired water-tube boilers, except for the final vessel in which the engine power was slightly raised to. Armament was one QF 12-pounder gun on a bandstand on the forecastle, five QF 6-pounder guns and two single tubes for 18-inch torpedoes.
Due to the successful development of their previous 26 and 27-knot torpedo boat destroyers, John I Thornycroft & Company developed their two funnel design for the 1894/1895 – 1897/1898 building programs. The ships were considered an incremental improvement to the previous 27-knot design of the 1893/94 program. This design would be used for all follow-on turtleback ships under the 30-knot specification. The 30-knot torpedo boat destroyers built by Thornycroft were referred to as two funnel – 30-knot ships and were not assigned a class name at the time.
They featured a large fore-bridge, mast halfway between bridge and fore funnel, turtleback cut-away bow, large round stern, both torpedo tubes on centerline aft of second funnel and two funnels. They had a Thornycroft stern with the rudder not visible. They had dual rudders which made them very responsive to the helm.

Ships

All ten of the D class were built by Thornycroft at Chiswick, in four batches.