Sturgeon-class destroyer

The Sturgeon-class destroyers served with the Royal Navy from 1894; three were built by the Vickers yard and differed from other similar ships in having their mast stepped before the first funnel. They had Blechynden boilers which gave them 4,000 hp and 27 kn. They were armed with one twelve pounder and two torpedo tubes. They carried a complement of 53 officers and men.

Construction and design
On 8 November 1893, the British Admiralty placed an order with the Naval Construction and Armament Company of Barrow-in-Furness (later to become part of Vickers) for three "Twenty-Seven Knotter" destroyers as part of the 1893–1894 construction programme for the Royal Navy, with in total, 36 destroyers being ordered from various shipbuilders for this programme.

The Admiralty only laid down a series of broad requirements for the destroyers, leaving detailed design to the ships' builders. The requirements included a trial speed of 27 kn, a "turtleback" forecastle and a standard armament of a QF 12 pounder 12 cwt (3 in calibre) gun on a platform on the ship's conning tower (in practice the platform was also used as the ship's bridge), with a secondary armament of five 6-pounder guns, and two 18 inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes.

The Naval Construction and Armament Company produced a design with a length of 194 ft overall and 190 ft between perpendiculars, with a beam of 19 ft and a draught of 7 ft. Displacement was 300 LT light and 340 LT deep load. Three funnels were fitted, with the foremast between the ship's bridge and the first funnel. Four Blechyndnen water-tube boilers fed steam at 200 psi to two three-cylinder triple expansion steam engines rated at 4000 ihp. 60 tons of coal were carried, giving a range of 1370 nmi at a speed of 11 kn. The ship's crew was 53 officers and men.

All three ships had been sold for scrapping before 1913 when the Admiralty re-classed the surviving 27-knotter destroyers as A Class destroyers.

Ships

 * HMS Sturgeon (1894)
 * HMS Starfish (1894)
 * HMS Skate (1895)