HMS Dido (1896)


HMS Dido was an protected cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1890s.

Design

second-class protected cruisers were preceded by the shorter Astraea-class cruisers. Dido had a displacement of when at normal load. It had a total length of, a beam of, a metacentric height of around, and a draught of. It was powered by two inverted triple-expansion steam engines which used steam from eight cylindrical boilers. Using normal draught, the boilers were intended to provide the engines with enough steam to generate and to reach a speed of ; using forced draft, the equivalent figures were and a speed of. Eclipse-class cruisers carried a maximum of of coal and achieved maximum speed of in sea trials.
It carried five 40-calibre QF 6 inch Mk I - III naval gun| quick-firing guns in single mounts protected by gun shields. One gun was mounted on the forecastle, two on the quarterdeck and one pair was abreast the bridge. They fired shells at a muzzle velocity of. The secondary armament consisted of six 40-calibre guns; three on each broadside. Their shells were fired at a muzzle velocity of. It was fitted with three 18-inch torpedo tubes, one submerged tube on each broadside and one above water in the stern. Its ammunition supply consisted of 200 six-inch rounds per gun, 250 shells for each 4.7-inch gun, 300 rounds per gun for the QF 12-pounder 12 cwt naval gun|s and 500 for each three-pounder. Dido had ten torpedoes, presumably four for each broadside tube and two for the stern tube.

Construction

Dido was laid down at London and Glasgow Shipbuilding Company's Govan, Glasgow shipyard on 30 August 1894. An initial attempt to launch the ship on 18 March 1896 proved unsuccessful, with the ship sticking on the slipway, but a second attempt on 20 March proved successful, with the ship being completed on 10 May 1898, at a cost of £252,278.

Operational history

Captain Philip Francis Tillard was appointed in command on 20 January 1900, when the Dido served at the China Station. In October 1901 she left Hong Kong homebound, arriving at Sheerness 14 December. She paid off at Chatham on 11 January 1902 and was placed in the Fleet Reserve as an emergency ship. It was almost a year until she was commissioned again, in late November 1902.
She received a Le Cheminant chronometer from the Royal Observatory on 17 March 1916.

Footnotes