, credited as the inventor of the destroyer concept, who died in action during the
Battle of Santiago de Cuba in 1898. The emergence and development of the destroyer was related to the invention of the
self-propelled torpedo in the 1860s. A navy now had the potential to destroy a superior enemy battle fleet using steam
launches to fire torpedoes. Cheap, fast boats armed with torpedoes, called
torpedo boats, were built and became a threat to large capital ships near enemy coasts. The first seagoing vessel designed to launch the self-propelled
Whitehead torpedo was the 33-ton in 1876. She was armed with two
drop collars to launch these weapons; these were replaced in 1879 by a single
torpedo tube in the bow. By the 1880s, the type had evolved into small ships of 50–100 tons, fast enough to evade enemy picket boats. At first, the threat of a torpedo-boat attack to a battle fleet was considered to exist only when at anchor, but as faster and longer-range torpedo boats and torpedoes were developed, the threat extended to cruising at sea. In response to this new threat, more heavily gunned picket boats called "catchers" were built, which were used to escort the battle fleet at sea. They needed significant seaworthiness and endurance to operate with the battle fleet, and as they inherently became larger, they became officially designated "torpedo-boat destroyers", and by the First World War were largely known as "destroyers" in English. The antitorpedo boat origin of this type of ship is retained in its name in other languages, including
French (),
Italian (),
Portuguese (),
Czech (),
Greek (, ),
Dutch () and, up until the Second World War,
Polish (, now obsolete). Once destroyers became more than just catchers guarding an anchorage, they were recognized to be also ideal to take over the offensive role of torpedo boats themselves, so they were also fitted with torpedo tubes in addition to their antitorpedo-boat guns. At that time, and even into World War I, the only function of destroyers was to protect their own battle fleet from enemy torpedo attacks and to make such attacks on the battleships of the enemy. The task of escorting merchant convoys was still in the future.
Early designs 's
Kotaka (1887) An important development came with the construction of
HMS Swift in 1884, later redesignated TB 81. This was a large (137 ton) torpedo boat with four
47 mm quick-firing guns and three torpedo tubes. At , while still not fast enough to engage enemy torpedo boats reliably, the ship at least had the armament to deal with them. Another forerunner of the torpedo-boat destroyer (TBD) was the Japanese torpedo boat (
Falcon), built in 1885. Designed to Japanese specifications and ordered from the Isle of Dogs, London
Yarrow shipyard in 1885, she was transported in parts to Japan, where she was assembled and launched in 1887. The long vessel was armed with four 1-pounder (37 mm) quick-firing guns and six
torpedo tubes, reached , and at 203 tons, was the largest torpedo boat built to date. In her trials in 1889,
Kotaka demonstrated that she could exceed the role of coastal defense, and was capable of accompanying larger
warships on the high seas. The Yarrow shipyards, builder of the parts for
Kotaka, "considered Japan to have effectively invented the destroyer". The German
aviso , launched in 1886, was designed as a "
Torpedojäger" (torpedo hunter), intended to screen the fleet against attacks by torpedo boats. The ship was significantly larger than torpedo boats of the period, displacing some , with an armament of guns and
Hotchkiss revolver cannon.
Torpedo gunboat The first vessel designed for the explicit purpose of hunting and destroying torpedo boats was the
torpedo gunboat. Essentially very small cruisers, torpedo gunboats were equipped with torpedo tubes and an adequate gun armament, intended for hunting down smaller enemy boats. By the end of the 1890s, torpedo gunboats were made obsolete by their more successful contemporaries, the TBDs, which were much faster. The first example of this was , designed by
Nathaniel Barnaby in 1885, and commissioned in response to the
Russian War scare. The gunboat was armed with torpedoes and designed for hunting and destroying smaller
torpedo boats. Exactly long and in beam, she displaced 550 tons. Built of steel,
Rattlesnake was unarmoured with the exception of a -inch protective deck. She was armed with a single
4-inch/25-pounder breech-loading gun, six
3-pounder QF guns and four torpedo tubes, arranged with two fixed tubes at the bow and a set of torpedo-dropping carriages on either side. Four torpedo reloads were carried. He asked several British shipyards to submit proposals capable of fulfilling these specifications. In 1885, the Spanish Navy chose the design submitted by the shipyard of James and
George Thomson of
Clydebank. (
Destroyer in Spanish) was laid down at the end of the year, launched in 1886, and commissioned in 1887. Some authors considered her as the first destroyer ever built. (
Destroyer), 1890 She displaced 348 tons, and was the first warship equipped with twin
triple-expansion engines generating , for a maximum speed of , which made her one of the faster ships in the world in 1888. She was armed with one Spanish-designed
Hontoria breech-loading gun, four (
6-pounder)
Nordenfelt guns, two (3-pdr)
Hotchkiss cannons and two
Schwartzkopff torpedo tubes. ==Development of the destroyer class==