NAVYPEDIA

Photo

TB25 as built  

Ships

Name	No	Yard No	Builder	Laid down	Launched	Comp	Fate
TB25 1906 - TB025		212	Thornycroft, Chiswick	1885	7.10.1885	1886	Discarded 1919

Technical data

Displacement normal, t	70
Displacement full, t	93
Length, m	38.1 pp 38.9 oa
Breadth, m	3.81
Draught, m	1.82
No of shafts	1
Machinery	1 2-cyl VCE, 1 locomotive boiler
Power, h. p.	700
Max speed, kts	19.4
Fuel, t	coal 20
Endurance, nm(kts)	1745(10)
Armament	3 x 2 - 25/40 Nordenfelt Mk I, 1 - 356 TT (bow), 2 x 2 - 356 TT
Complement	16

Graphics

Project history

These boats were ordered in numbers because of the 1885/6 war scare with Russia, and because of the realisation that both France and Russia were building up their torpedo boat arms to a much larger extent than Britain. The original intention was to use them as 'torpedo catchers', as escorts for the fleet against Russian TBs, and therefore they were to have an armament of 2 47mm and 2-twin-barrelled Nordenfeld MGs (later replaced by 5-barrelled 11.43mm guns) plus one fixed bow TT(356mm). However, they were also intended from the start to double as TBs, and they were all completed with the alternative armament of two pairs of deck TT instead of the 47mm guns.     Ordered in February 1885 before the Russian war scare had started, TB25 was the prototype for the class. Unfortunately her 'bull nose' ram bow proved to be totally unseaworthy, and she was rapidly returned to dockyard hands to have the ram bow and the fixed TT removed, and thereafter proved a useful vessel, with only the deck tubes and a conventional straight bow. She steered well, having Thornycroft's own special design of stem with a slight hollow to it and curved rudders on either side of the propeller to give a 'tunnel effect'.

Modernizations

1886: - 1 - 356 TT

1901: was reboilered with water-tube boilers.

Naval service

TB25 was reboilered in 1901 with water-tube boilers, served as a patrol boat during the First World War, and was broken up soon afterwards.