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HMS Dasher
Class overview
Name	Charger class
Builders	Yarrow Shipbuilders, Cubitt Town
Operators	Royal Navy
Preceded by	Ardent class
Succeeded by	Hardy class
Built	1894–1895
In commission	1894–1912
Completed	3
Retired	3
General characteristics
Type	Torpedo boat destroyer
Displacement	255 long tons (259 t) light; 295 long tons (300 t) full load
Length	195 ft (59 m) overall; 190 ft 8 in (58.12 m) between perpendiculars
Beam	18.5 ft (5.6 m)
Draught	7.25 ft (2.2 m)
Propulsion	2 Coal-fired Normand locomotive boilers, replaced 1899-1900 by 4 Thornycroft water-tube boilers. Vertical triple-expansion steam engines. 2 shafts. 3,800 hp (2,834 kW)
Speed	27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph)
Complement	50 (later raised to 53)
Armament	1 × QF 12-pounder gun 5 × QF 6-pounder guns 2 × 18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes

The three Charger-class destroyers were all ordered by the British Admiralty on 12 October 1893 and on completion in early 1896 they served with the Royal Navy until 1911.

As part of the 1893–1894 Naval Estimates, the British Admiralty placed orders for 36 torpedo-boat destroyers, all to be capable of 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph), the "27-knotters", as a follow-on to the six prototype "26-knotters" ordered in the previous 1892–1893 Estimates. As was typical for torpedo craft at the time, the Admiralty left detailed design to the builders, laying down only broad requirements.^[1][2]

Charger, Dasher and Hasty were built by Yarrow Shipbuilders to their builders' design at a contract price of £108,600, or £36,200 each,^[3] It was originally intended that they would be armed with one 12-pounder quick-firing gun forward and three 6-pounder guns, mounted on the broadside and aft, and three 18-inch torpedo tubes, one fixed in a bow mount and two on a revolving mount abaft the two funnels;^[4] however the fixed bow tube fitted in the preceding '26-knotter' type had subsequently been found to throw up too much spray and was removed, and in October 1893 it was agreed that the bow tube should be omitted, giving "a clean sharp stem with no projections"^[5] and instead two extra 6-pounder guns were installed en echelon amidships. These three ships - and the similar three Ardent Class destroyers (ordered from Thornycroft in the same week) - were the first TBDs to omit this fixed bow tube. They carried a complement of 2 officers and 48 ratings (comprising 20 deck department and 28 engine room compartment).^[6]

These three ships did not quite meet the speed requirement of 27 knots for which they were designed. In three-hour trials they averaged the following power (ihp) and speed:

Their original two locomotive boilers were very troublesome and in their first few years of service the three ships were out of commission most of the time, but these were replaced by four new water-tube boilers (from Thornycroft) in 1899/1900 at Earle's Shipbuilding yard at Kingston upon Hull.^[7] This replaced the original closely-spaced twin funnels by three widely-spaced funnels (with the middle funnel twice the size of the others, as it served two boilers), like the majority of the other destroyers of the 1893-1894 Programme, and the ships continued to provide good service - all serving in Home waters until 1911. They were then decommissioned and all three were sold in 1912 to be scrapped.

• A-class destroyer (1913)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charger class destroyer.

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