H.M.S. Salmon (1895)

H.M.S. Salmon (1895)
Builder:	Earle's Shipbuilding
Ordered:	1893-94
Laid down:	12 Mar, 1894
Launched:	15 Jan, 1895
Commissioned:	14 Jan, 1896
Broken up:	1912

H.M.S. Salmon was one of thirty-six 27 Knotters, early Torpedo Boat Destroyers built for the Royal Navy in the 1890s.

Like most of her highly variated brethren, her useful life ran its course before the Great War. She was scrapped in 1912.

Construction & Service

Salmon arrived at Sheerness with six other destroyers from the North Sea on 1 October, 1901.

She collided with the Great Eastern Railway Company's steamship Cambridge (Captain Horne) at 10.30pm on 2 December, 1901 while under the command of Harry Charles John Roberts West. She had been entering Harwich Harbour along with her flotilla, which was being led by Cheerful under the command of Commander Frederic William Dean. Two men named Bartlett and Amering were killed when Cambridge struck Salmon just above the No. 4 boiler. A coroner's inquiry was held on 18 December with representatives of the Great Eastern Railway Company, the Admiralty and for Captain Horne personally. Attempts to illustrate the nature of the accident using first models and later scarf pins and wax matches on a large navigational map to represent ships. Lieutenant West resisted insinuations that Salmon was too far behind his next ahead, Haughty. Her lamps were also examined to determine if they were not bright enough.

Salmon was one of seventeen destroyers of the Reserve Division which left Sheerness on 1 July, 1905 for Spithead under the overall command of Commander R. G. Gregory in H.M.S. Spitfire.

She and sixteen other destroyers of the Reserve Division arrived at Sheerness on 13 July 1905 and proceeded to Chatham.

Fittings and Performance

Lionel Dawson wrote of his experiences in command of the destroyer.

Like many of her class, the helm was situated behind the platform for the 12-pdr gun, with the helmsman peering ahead through a small gap under the platform and over the foredeck. It was very hard to see. The common workaround was to construct a new wheel on the gun platform and connect it below by shafts and screws. In Salmon, this wheel was actually a training wheel for a 4.7-in gun, and it required 32 revolutions to move the rudder from hard port to hard starboard. Vexingly, the action of this wheel was the opposite to what a ship's wheel ordinarily delivered.

Her eight boilers seemed to be more than enough for her. Dawson's engineer would joke and say that "the last two or three [boilers] only made the deck hot, since the engines could not take up the steam from them."

Captains

Dates of appointment are provided when known.

• Lieutenant & Commander Charles J. Collins, 14 January, 1896 – 4 June, 1896
• Lieutenant & Commander John F. E. Green, 12 September, 1896 – 15 February, 1898
• Lieutenant & Commander James R. P. Hawksley, 10 September, 1898 – 8 October, 1898
• Lieutenant & Commander Guy de L. O. Johnson, 25 August, 1900 – 13 September, 1900
• Lieutenant & Commander Guy de L. O. Johnson, 16 November, 1900 – 5 December, 1900
• Lieutenant & Commander Ivor F. Chichester, 16 July, 1901 – August, 1901  (for the Annual Manoeuvres of 1901)
• Lieutenant & Commander Harry C. J. R. West, August, 1901 – 17 January, 1902
• Lieutenant & Commander Frederick B. Noble, 25 March, 1903 – 21 December, 1903
• Lieutenant & Commander Richard F. White, 21 December, 1903 – 28 October, 1904
• Lieutenant in Command Hubert S. Monroe, 20 April, 1905 – 3 August, 1906
• Gunner in Command John Reep, 3 August, 1906 – 4 September, 1906
• Lieutenant & Commander Norman H. Carter, 11 September, 1906 – 25 May, 1907
• Lieutenant-Commander Louis H. Crozier, 10 November, 1907 – 1 February, 1908
• Lieutenant-Commander Charles E. L. Thomas, 1 February, 1908 – 29 September, 1908
• Lieutenant & Commander Cecil R. Hemans, 29 September, 1908 – 20 March, 1909
• Lieutenant & Commander Ralph V. Eyre, 20 March, 1909 – 1 December, 1909
• Lieutenant & Commander Norman A. K. Money, 1 December, 1909
• Lieutenant & Commander Charles H. Jones, 15 August, 1910 – September, 1910
• Lieutenant & Commander Lionel G. Dawson, 21 December, 1910 – 24 May, 1911

See Also

• Wikipedia