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The ''Volage'' class was a group of two screw corvettes built for the Royal Navy in the late 1860s. Both ships spent the bulk of their active service abroad. ''Volage'' spent most of her first commission assigned to the Detached or Flying Squadron circumnavigating the world and then carried a party of astronomers to the Kerguelen Islands to observe the Transit of Venus in 1874. The ship was then assigned as the senior officer's ship in South American waters until she was transferred to the Training Squadron during the 1880s. ''Active'' served as the commodore's ship on the Cape of Good Hope and West Africa Station and her crew served ashore in both the Third Anglo-Ashanti and Zulu Wars. She was assigned to the Training Squadron in 1885 after a period in reserve. The sisters were paid off in 1898–99 and sold for scrap in 1904 and 1906, respectively. ==Design and description== Sir Edward Reed, the Director of Naval Construction, was tasked to provide a combination of seaworthiness and speed for these ships. He gave the ships a high length-to-beam ratio to increase their speed, but this made the design less manoeuvrable. To offset this, the ends of the ships were narrowed to allow the rudder as much authority as possible even though this reduced buoyancy at the ends of the ship and caused the weights to be concentrated in the middle of the ship. The compromise proved to be successful and the design did not have a large turning circle. Admiral G. A. Ballard considered them to be "a definite step forward in the shipbuilder's art."〔Ballard, pp. 53–54〕 Ballard considered their only real defect to be unsteadiness as gun platforms as their metacentric height was fairly high, which caused them to roll excessively, and they pitched quite a bit in a head sea due to the lack of buoyancy in the narrow bow. Bilge keels were later installed during one of their refits to curb their rolling motion.〔Ballard, p. 55〕 The ''Volage''-class ships were long between perpendiculars and had a beam of . Forward, the ships had a draught of , but aft they drew . They displaced and had a burthen of 2,322 tons. Their iron hull was covered by a layer of oak that was sheathed with copper from the waterline down to prevent biofouling.〔Lyon & Winfield, p. 265〕 Watertight transverse bulkheads subdivided the hull.〔Ballard, p. 54〕 Their crew consisted of 340 officers and enlisted men.〔 The ships had one 2-cylinder steam engine driving a single propeller.〔 Five rectangular boilers provided steam to the engine at a working pressure of .〔Ballard, pp. 57–58〕 The engine produced a total of which gave them a maximum speed of about . The ships carried of coal, enough to steam at .〔 The class was ship rigged and had a sail area of .〔 The lower masts were made of iron, but the other masts were wood. Their best speed under sail alone was . Their funnel was semi-retractable to reduce wind resistance〔 and the propeller could be hoisted up into the stern of the ship to reduce drag while under sail.〔 The ships were initially armed with a mix of 7-inch and 64-pounder 64 cwt〔"cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 64 cwt referring to the weight of the gun.〕 rifled muzzle-loading guns. The six guns and two of the four 64-pounders were mounted on the broadside while the other two were mounted on the forecastle and poop deck as chase guns.〔Ballard, pp. 55–56〕 The 16-calibre 7-inch gun weighed and fired a shell. It was credited with the nominal ability to penetrate armour.〔Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 6〕 In 1879–80, ten BL 6-inch 80-pounder breech-loading guns replaced all the broadside weapons. Two carriages for torpedoes were also added.〔 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「Volage-class corvette」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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