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HMS Collingwood (1882)

HMS Collingwood was the lead ship of her class of ironclad battleships built for the Royal Navy during the 1880s. The ship's essential design became the standard for most of the following British battleships. Completed in 1887, she spent the next two years in reserve before she was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet for the next eight years. After returning home in 1897, the ship spent the next six years as a guardship in Ireland. Collingwood was not significantly damaged during an accidental collision in 1899 and was paid off four years later. The ship was sold for scrap in 1909 and subsequently broken up.

Background and design

At the time of her design, she was not considered as being the forerunner of any class; she was designed by the Director of Naval Construction, Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, as a one-off as an answer to the French Amiral Baudin-class ironclads, which carried three heavy guns on the centreline and a number of smaller pieces on the broadside. He made several proposals to the Board of Admiralty, but they were all rejected. The four French Terrible-class ironclads inspired Barnaby's final submission laid down in 1877–1878 and was a return to the configuration of Devastation with the primary armament positioned fore and aft of the central superstructure, but with the breech-loading main armament mounted in barbettes, as per the French ships, which allowed them to be sited 10 feet (3.0 m) further above the waterline than Devastation's guns.[4] The Board modified Barnaby's design by adding 25 feet (7.6 m) of length and 2,000 indicated horsepower (1,500 kW) to guarantee a speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) at deep load. It also substituted four smaller 42-long-ton (43 t) guns for Barnaby's two 80-long-ton (81 t) guns. The additional length and the Board's acceptance of the hull lines from Colossus increased the size of the ship by 2,500 long tons (2,540 t).

Barnaby was severely criticised, particularly by Sir Edward Reed, himself a former Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy, because Collingwood's waterline armour belt was concentrated amidships and did not extend to the ends of the ship. Reed believed that this weakness meant that the ship could be sunk from the consequent uninhibited flooding if her unarmoured ends were riddled by shellfire and open to the sea. Barnaby deliberately selected a hull shape with narrow, fine ends to limit the volume of the hull that could be flooded and situated the armoured deck below
the waterline to prevent it from being pierced by enemy shells and flooding the lower part of the ironclad. Furthermore, he heavily subdivided the hull to limit the amount of water that could enter through any one hit and placed coal bunkers above the armoured deck to absorb the fragments from exploding shells. Unbeknownst to his critics, Collingwood was tested in 1884 with her ends and the large spaces in her hold ballasted with water and her draught only increased by 17.5 inches (440 mm) and she lost a minor amount of speed. The price was that the ship lacked buoyancy at her ends and tended to bury her bow in oncoming waves rather than be lifted over them. Her speed was greatly reduced in a head sea and the resulting spray made working the guns very difficult. Collingwood tended to roll heavily and was not regarded as a good seaboat. Despite these issues, her basic configuration was followed by most subsequent British ironclads and predreadnought battleships until the revolutionary Dreadnought of 1905.

Use in game and stats

This ship has very short range guns, rely on fast turning speed and torpedos to get as close as possible and use well placed secondaries to provide enough cover fire to keep the enemy busy for torpedo reloads

Parts (1280)1608

Displacement: 12924 t

HP: 10139 U

Buoyancy: 20608 t

Density: 0.63 g/cm3

Length: 99.2 m

Beam: 25.5m

Height: 43.9 m

Power: 20055 hp

FullSpeedTime: 51.4 S

Full Rudder Time: 4.1 S

Accuracy 69.4%