Themes

Article highlights

• Dreadnoughts and battlecruisers

• Majestic class battleships 1894 – 1896

• HMS Dreadnought, battleship 1906

• Orion class battleships 1910 – 1911

• Queen Elizabeth class battleships 1913 – 1915

• HMS Invincible, battlecruiser 1907

• HMS Tiger, battlecruiser 1913

HMS Tiger 1913

HMS Tiger was the only ship of its class, a sister ship, Leopard, was planned but never built. Tiger was an improvement on the battlecruiser design and at 29 knots and 704 foot was the largest and fastest ship afloat at the time.

Designers were going to base HMS Tiger on the Lion class battlecruiser. Shipbuilders modified it, however, following the new and more balanced design of the Japanese battlecruiser Kongo under construction at Vickers shipbuilders at the time.

The end result was a ship that weighed 28 430 tons and had a complement of 1121 men.

The Royal Navy installed 13.5-inch guns with a better arrangement of the wing turrets to allow a better arc of fire. They also increased the ship’s secondary armament from 4-inch guns to 6-inch guns, matching the newest British battleships of the time.

Unfortunately for the battlecruisers, the lightly armoured ships were vulnerable against similar ships with large calibre guns as witnessed at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

HMS Tiger survived the battle, its distant relative, HMS Invincible, however, did not.