Drake-class cruiser

The Drake class was a four-ship class of armoured cruisers built around 1900 for the Royal Navy.

Design and description
The Drake class were enlarged and improved versions of the Cressy-class cruiser designed by Sir William White, Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy, to counter the new French armoured cruiser FRENCH CRUISER Jeanne d'Arc. The ships had an overall length of 553 ft, a beam of 71 ft and a deep draught of 26 ft. They displaced 14150 LT and proved to be good seaboats in service. Their crew consisted of 900 officers and other ranks.

The ships were powered by two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, using steam provided by 43 Belleville boilers. The engines produced a total of 30000 ihp and the Drakes easily reached their designed speed of 23 kn. They carried a maximum of 2500 LT of coal.

The main armament of the Drake-class ships consisted of two breech-loading (BL) 9.2 in Mk X guns in single gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. They fired 380 lb shells to a range of 15500 yd. The ships' secondary armament of sixteen BL 6-inch Mk VII guns was arranged in casemates amidships. Eight of these were mounted on the main deck and were only usable in calm weather. They had a maximum range of approximately 12200 yd with their 100 lb shells. A dozen quick-firing (QF) 12-pounder 12 cwt guns were fitted for defence against torpedo boats. Two additional 12-pounder 8 cwt guns could be dismounted for service ashore. The ships also carried three 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns and two submerged 17.7 in torpedo tubes.

The ship's waterline armour belt had a maximum thickness of 6 in and was closed off by 5 in transverse bulkheads. The armour of the gun turrets and their barbettes was 6 inches thick while the casemate armour was 5 inches thick. The protective deck armour ranged in thickness from 1 - 2.5 in and the conning tower was protected by 12 in of armour.

Ships
The following table gives the build details and purchase cost of the members of the Drake class. Standard British practice at that time was for these costs to exclude armament and stores. The compilers of The Naval Annual revised costs quoted for British ships between the 1905 and 1906 editions. The reasons for the differences are unclear.

Service history
The ships served in the First World War with only two surviving it. Good Hope was sunk at the Battle of Coronel in 1914 and Drake was torpedoed in 1917. Drake was also used to ferry Russian bullion (gold) in October 1914 from Arkhangelsk. The gold (equivalent of $39 million) was security for western loans. The transfer took place at high seas, 30 miles off the coast in the dead of night.