HMS Revenge (1892)

The design of the Royal Sovereign-class ships was derived from that of the battleships, greatly enlarged to improve seakeeping and to provide space for a secondary armament as in the preceding battleships. The ships displaced at normal load and at deep load. They had a length between perpendiculars of and an overall length of , a beam of , and a draught of . As a flagship, Revenges crew consisted of 695 officers and ratings in 1903. The Royal Sovereigns were powered by a pair of three-cylinder, vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft. Their Humphrys & Tennant engines Each gun was provided with 80 rounds. The Royal Sovereigns' armour scheme was similar to that of the Trafalgars, as the waterline belt of compound armour only protected the area between the barbettes. The belt and transverse bulkheads thick closed off the ends of the belt. Above the belt was a strake of nickel-steel armour closed off by transverse bulkheads. The barbettes were protected by compound armour, ranging in thickness from and the casemates for the 6-inch guns had a thickness equal to their diameter. The thicknesses of the armour deck ranged from . The walls of the forward conning tower were thick and the aft conning tower was protected by 3-inch plates. ==Construction==

during naval trials of observation kites in 1908. Revenge was the ninth ship of her name to serve in the Royal Navy and was ordered under the Naval Defence Act Programme of 1889. The ship was laid down by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company at their shipyard in Jarrow in Tyne and Wear, England, on 12 February 1891. She was floated out of the drydock on 3 November 1892, and completed on 22 March 1894 at a cost of £954,825. ==Operational history==

1892-1896 The Revenge was immortalised in the painting "The Revenge leaving Jarrow" by Niels Moeller Lund which “managed to give picturesqueness to such a strictly utilitarian place as the Jarrow works”. Upon completion, she was placed in reserve at Portsmouth where almost two years later, she mobilised on 14 January 1896 as flagship of the Particular Service Squadron, soon renamed the Flying Squadron, which was formed in response to rising tensions in Europe following the Jameson Raid and Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II's telegram of support to the Boer government. The squadron was briefly attached to the Mediterranean Fleet in the middle of the year. When it was disbanded on 5 November, Revenge relieved the battleship as the flagship of the second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet. arriving at Suda Bay, Crete, on 21 December 1898. The French protected cruiser Bugeaud, carrying Prince George of Greece and Denmark, who will take up duty as High Commissioner of the Cretan State, leads the column. She is followed (right to left) by the Russian armored cruiser Gerzog Edinburgski, HMS Revenge, and the Italian battleship Francesco Morosini. International Squadron From February 1897 to December 1898, Revenge served in the International Squadron, a multinational force made up of ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, French Navy, Imperial German Navy, Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina), Imperial Russian Navy, and Royal Navy that intervened in the 1897-1898 Greek uprising on Crete against rule by the Ottoman Empire. She contributed personnel to an international landing force of sailors and marines the squadron put ashore at Canea on 15 February 1897. On 21 February 1897, she joined the British torpedo gunboats and , the Russian battleship Imperator Aleksandr II, the Austro-Hungarian armored cruiser , and the German protected cruiser in the International Squadron's first direct offensive action, a brief bombardment of Cretan insurgent positions on the heights east of Canea after the insurgents refused the squadron's order to take down a Greek flag they had raised, and she hit the farmstead that served as the insurgents′ base of operations with three 6-inch (152-mm) shells. After a bombardment by the British battleship on 26 and 27 March 1897 forced insurgents to abandon their siege of the Izzeddin Fortress near the entrance to Suda Bay, Revenge put a contingent of Royal Marines ashore that occupied the fortress. Thanks to the International Squadron's actions, organized fighting on Crete ended in late March 1897, although the insurrection continued. The squadron focused on supporting international occupation forces ashore and enforcing a blockade of Crete and key ports in Greece. After Rear Admiral Noel relieved Rear Admiral Harris on 12 January 1898, Noel withdrew his flag from Crete, The riot led the International Squadron to demand the withdrawal of all Ottoman forces from Crete, and when the final Ottoman troops finally departed on 6 November 1898, sailors from Revenge and the British battleship supervised their embarkation aboard the British torpedo gunboat . On 19 December 1898, Revenge, with Noel aboard, joined the Italian battleship Francesco Morosini (carrying the admiral commanding the International Squadron's Italian ships) and the Russian armored cruiser Gerzog Edinburgski (with the senior Russian commander, Rear Admiral Nikolai Skrydlov, aboard) in steaming to Milos with the French protected cruiser Bugeaud, flagship of the International Squadron's overall commander, Rear Admiral Édouard Pottier. At Milos, they rendezvoused with Prince George of Greece and Denmark aboard his yacht. After Prince George boarded Bugeaud on 20 December, Revenge, Francesco Morosini, and Gerzog Edinburgski escorted Bugeaud to Crete, where Prince George disembarked on 21 December 1898 to take office as the High Commissioner of an autonomous Cretan State under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, bringing the Cretan uprising to an end. The International Squadron then dissolved. 1899-1913 In 1899, Revenge suffered a cordite explosion in one of her 6-inch (152-mm) magazines due to spontaneous combustion, but the damage was not very severe because only three cartridges detonated. In April 1900, the battleship replaced her in the Mediterranean and she returned home, paying off into Fleet Reserve at Chatham Dockyard. During this time the ship had a wireless telegraph installed. On 18 April 1901, Revenge was recommissioned at Chatham by Captain Frederic Fisher to relieve Alexandra as both the coast guard ship at Portland and the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Gerard Noel, Admiral Superintendent of Naval Reserves. In March 1902, she arrived at Portsmouth for a refit that included the provision of casemates for her upper-deck six-inch guns, and her crew was temporarily transferred to the elderly ironclad , which also took on her duties at Portland. Captain Fisher and his crew were back on board Revenge in early June 1902, following gun trials after the repairs. After the refit, she took part in the fleet review held at Spithead on 16 August 1902 for the coronation of King Edward VII, then commissioned in October 1902 to serve as flagship of the Home Fleet upon its creation. In April 1904, Revenge and her sister ship both struck a submerged wreck off the Scilly Isles while serving with the Home Fleet, damaging their bottoms. In July 1905, the ship participated in maneuvers with the Reserve Fleet and was then transferred to the Portsmouth Reserve Division on 1 September 1905. In June 1906, she relieved the battleship Colossus as the gunnery training ship at Portsmouth and was assigned to the gunnery school HMS Excellent. On 13 June 1908, Revenge was struck by the merchant ship when the latter was cut loose by her tugboat during a sudden squall in Portsmouth Harbour. In October 1909, she conducted gunnery tests on the obsolete battleship to evaluate the effects of shells against varying thicknesses of armour. On 7 January 1912, the ship was badly damaged when, during a gale at Portsmouth, she broke loose from her moorings and drifted onto the bow of the dreadnought . the liners were removed in October 1912. Her refit completed, she was ordered on 31 October 1914 to stand by to relieve the battleship as flagship of the Dover Patrol. Revenge was declared ready for service on 5 November 1914, and was assigned to the Channel Fleet's new 6th Battle Squadron along with the battleships Albemarle, , , , and . Plans for the squadron to participate in an attack on German submarine bases were cancelled due to bad weather on 14 November 1914, and instead Revenge and the battleship departed Dover, England, for Dunkirk, France. In early 1915, the ship participated in experiments using aircraft to observe and control her gunfire, but these were only partially successful. In April and May 1915 she underwent a refit at Chatham Dockyard in which she had anti-torpedo bulges fitted. Afterwards, Revenge conducted trials using sea-based observers on off-shore platforms to direct the bombardment. On 2 August 1915, she was renamed Redoubtable to free the name Revenge for a new dreadnought battleship. Redoubtable underwent another refit from October to December 1915. Afterwards, she was not recommissioned, instead serving as an accommodation ship at Portsmouth until February 1919. ==Disposal==

Redoubtable was sold to Thos. W. Ward for scrapping for £42,750 on 6 November 1919. She arrived at Swansea for stripping on 16 December 1919, and at Briton Ferry, for final scrapping on 30 September 1921. ==Notes==

• The Dreadnought Project has a list of commanders