|
HMS ''Penelope'' was the last small ironclad to be commissioned in the Royal Navy. Because of the absence through illness of the Chief Constructor, Sir Edward Reed, the design of this ship was entrusted to his brother-in-law and the future Chief Constructor, Nathaniel Barnaby. ==Design== She was specifically designed and intended to be a ship of unusually shallow draught; why this was so cannot now be established, but it is a speculation the Board of Admiralty intended her for inshore use in the Baltic Sea, where ships of greater draught than hers cannot come close to land without grounding. The same concept led Admiral Jackie Fisher, the First Sea Lord in the early part of World War I, to initiate the construction of the battlecruisers , and . Being of shallow draught, it was necessary to build her with twin screws, as a single screw (of larger diameter) would have been carried insufficiently deep to be adequately effective. This in turn required twin rudders, and an unusual shape to the stern which disturbed the free flow of water along the hull. The shallowness of her draught made her a very poor performer under sail, and she was described as "drifting to leeward in a wind like a tea tray" (Captain Willes, R.N., one-time commander of ''Penelope''). She was a broadside ironclad, with the guns being deployed centrally on either side of the ship in a box battery. A limited amount of axial, or end-on fire, was allowed for by the provision of secondary gun-ports at the corners of the battery, through which the end-most guns could be traversed to fire. The 5-inch weapons, situated two forward and one aft on the upper deck, were of only marginal effectiveness. She was the first British capital ship to be fitted with a washroom. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HMS Penelope (1867)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|