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Birmingham’s contribution to Royal Navy history.

Pedrocut

Pedrocut

Master Barmmie
Aug 1896 report from Chatham of trials of the ship “Spitfire” an Armstrong-built 27-knot Twin Screw torpedo boat destroyer, engined by Messrs Bellis & Co. Birmingham. It had 6 guns and indicated 4,000 hp.

A contribution by Birmingham to the Royal Navy’s first generation of purpose-built destroyers.

IMG_1856.jpeg
 
1895 – launched at Armstrong’s Elswick yard.
1896 – trials/commissioning; approximately 27 knots.
1900 – Chatham repairs; joins Medway instructional flotilla.
1902 – Belliss machinery/boilers receive substantial attention; becomes tender to Immortalité.
1912 – sold after roughly sixteen years’ service.

“Destroyer technology was advancing extraordinarily quickly, and a 27-knot boat of 1895 was becoming obsolete within only a few years.”
 
The other boat produced was the Swordfish…

“The machinery for these vessels was manufactured by Messrs. G. E. Belliss and Co., of Birmingham. Their engines are of the triple-expansion four-cylinder type, the diameters of the cylinders being as follows:-High-pressure, 18.75in.; intermediate-pressure, 27.25in.; and each low-pressure 28in. with a stroke of 18in.; and their boilers are of the well-known Yarrow straight-tube type. Each vessel has eight of these and the steam pressure is 200 Ib. per square inch. The performance of these boilers was in every way successful, abundance of steam being generated from start to finish.”

(The Engineer)
 
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