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Amazon-class sloop
HMS Dryad (1866)
HMS Dryad at anchor, with sails airing
Class overview
Name: Amazon-class sloops
Builders: Pembroke Dockyard
Devonport Dockyard
Operators: Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom Royal Navy
Built: 1865–1866
In commission: 1865–1885
Completed: 6
Lost: 2
General characteristics
Type: Screw sloop
Displacement: 1574 tons
Length: 187 ft (57 m)
Beam: 36 ft (11 m)
Draught: 17 ft (5.2 m)[1]
Installed power: 300 horsepower[1]
Propulsion: Single screw
Two-cylinder horizontal single-expansion steam engine
Sail plan: Barque
Complement: 150[1]
Armament:

As built:
2 × 7-inch (6½-ton) muzzle loading rifled guns
2 × 64-pounder muzzle loading rifled guns

As converted (Dryad, Nymphe & Vestal):
9 × 64-pounder muzzle loading rifled guns[2]

The Amazon class was a class of six screw sloops of wooden construction built for the Royal Navy between 1865 and 1866.

Construction[]

Design[]

Designed by Edward Reed,[2] the Royal Navy Director of Naval Construction, they were equipped with a ram bow.[2] The hull was of wooden construction, but they were the first class of sloops to incorporate a form of composite construction; they had iron cross beams while retaining wooden framing.[2]

Propulsion[]

Propulsion was provided by a two-cylinder horizontal single-expansion steam engine by Ravenhill, Salkeld & Company driving a single 15 ft (4.6 m) screw. Vestal and Nymphe were fitted with three-cylinder Maudslay engines.[2]

Sail plan[]

All the ships of the class were built with a barque rig.[2]

Armament[]

The class was designed with two 7-inch (6½-ton) muzzle loading rifled guns mounted on slides on centre-line pivots, and two 64-pounder muzzle loading rifled guns on broadside trucks. Dryad, Nymphe and Vestal were rearmed in the early 1870s with an armament of nine 64-pounder muzzle loading rifled guns, four each side and a centre-line pivot mount at the bow.[2]

Ships[]

Name Ship Builder Launched Fate
Amazon Pembroke Dockyard 1865 Sunk in collision with SS Osprey, off Start Point, English Channel 10 July 1866[1]
Vestal Pembroke Dockyard 1865 Sold to Castle for breaking in December 1884[2]
Niobe Devonport Dockyard 1866 Wrecked off Cape Blanc on Miquelon Island, off the Atlantic Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador 21 May 1874[1]
Dryad Devonport Dockyard 1866 Sold in September 1885 and broken up in April 1886[2]
Daphne Pembroke Dockyard 1866 Sold for breaking on 7 November 1882[2]
Nymphe Devonport Dockyard 1866 Sold for breaking in December 1884[2]

Notes[]

Bibliography[]



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The original article can be found at Amazon-class sloop and the edit history here.
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