HMS Canada (1913)

HMS Canada was a battleship, sometimes identified as a member of the Iron Duke class battleships originally ordered by the government of Chile as Valparaiso. Before launching, the ship's name was change to Almirante Latorre. Incomplete at the outbreak of World War I, she was purchased by the British government in September 1914 and re-named HMS Canada.

History

HMS Canada was part of the Grand Fleet's Fourth Battle Squadron and took part in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Thereafter she was in the First Battle Squadron. After the end of the war from 1919 into 1920 she was refitted at Devonport before she was returned to Chile as the Almirante Latorre. A modernization program allowed her to survive until 1959. In September 1931, her crew participated in a mutiny.

She was one of the last World War I battleships afloat when she was sold in 1958 and scrapped in Japan in 1959. There she was a source of fittings for the repair of the museum ship, the Japanese battleship Mikasa which had been built in a British shipyard about the same time as HMS Canada.

At the time she was bought, her sister ship, the Almirante Cochrane, was also purchased for the Royal Navy. She was less complete than the Almirante Latorre, and was never completed as a battleship. Instead, she laid incomplete on the slip from 1914 to 1917, when she was purchased and completed as HMS Eagle, one of the first aircraft carrier. As Eagle she served in World War II and was sunk in the Mediterranean while escorting one of the Malta convoys.

Specifications

Built at Elswick, by Armstrong-Whitworth.

• Laid down: November, 1911
• Launched: November, 1913
• Completed: September, 1915.
• Displacement: 25,000 tons; about 32,000 tons fully loaded.
• Length: 625 feet
• beam: 92 feet 6 inch
• draught: 33 feet maximum.
• Armament:
  • Ten 14 inch guns in 5 turrets
  • Twelve 6 inch guns,
  • Two 3 inch anti-aircraft guns,
  • Four 3 pounder guns
  • Four 21 inch Torpedo tubes (submerged).
• Machinery:
  • 21 Yarrow boilers.
  • Low pressure Parsons and High pressure Brown-Curtis turbines.
  • Fuel: coal and oil.
• Performance:
  • Power: 37,000 shp (39,247 shp during trials)
  • Speed: 22.75 kts.

Design notes

Original secondary armament was to be 22 X 4.7". This was changed to 16 X 6", then reduced to 12 X 6". Design somewhat similar to Iron Duke class, but slightly larger and mounted 14" guns instead of the 10 X 13.5" carried by the Iron Dukes.

References

• Jane's Fighting Ships.

See also

• Almirante Latorre of the Chilean Navy