am indebted to the following institutions for their help in accessing their archives:
National Maritime Museum
Historic Photographs and Ship Plans Section, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
Jeremy Michel and Andrew Choong.
Glasgow University Archive Services
The Customer Services Team
National Records of Scotland
Image Library:
Matthew Fawcett, Leanne Jobling, Gill Mapstone, John Simmons, Pat Todd
Conservators:
Eva Martinez Moya, Linda Ramsay
Digital Services:
Paul Riley
A debt of thanks is also due to Rob Gardiner at Seaforth for his enthusiasm and assistance and to Stephen Dent for the design of this book.
Ian Johnston,
March 2011
The first reference to the Invincible class contained within the Ship’s Cover is in a letter dated 20 March 1905, in which the Director of Naval Construction (DNC), Sir Philip Watts, was advised that the Board of Admiralty had approved the outline design submitted by the Committee on Designs for new cruisers to be included in the programme for 1905–6. The letter requested that the complete design should now be worked out and that the cruisers would be built by contract meaning by private shipyards and not by Royal Dockyards. As a new class of ship known from 1912 onwards as battlecruisers, they were at first referred to under several names such as armoured cruisers or large armoured vessels.
At Clydebank, the first reference to the contract that would become Inflexible was made on 16 August 1905 when the Shipyard Director, John Dunlop, reported to his board that the company was in discussion with the Admiralty concerning a large armoured vessel. At this meeting, Dunlop said that should this order proceed, a large investment in plant would be made at the yard totalling £60,000. At the same meeting, the Board took notice of the implications of the Official Secrets Act (1889) in relation to this vessel. A set of drawings and a detailed specification provided by the Admiralty formed the basis on which the shipbuilder would estimate the building costs necessary to submit a tender. Three ships of the Invincible class were to be constructed originally to be named Invincible, Immortalité and Raleigh. Of the three, it had already been decided that one (Raleigh) was to be fitted with electrically-operated 12in main armament mountings while her sister-ships had the proven hydraulic type as fitted in the Lord Nelson class pre-dreadnought battleships.
On 12 October 1905, John Brown & Co submitted a tender to the Admiralty for ‘An armoured vessel to be fitted with turbines of 41,000ihp and 31 Yarrow boilers’.
The tender also included a price for fitting the vessels with Babcock & Wilcox boilers which cost an extra £8,660 plus £1,340 profit giving a total of £10,000 in addition to the above. This type of boiler offered advantages over the Yarrow type but was more expensive and weighed more. Delivery of the ship on the Clyde was to be in two-and-a-half years with an additional six weeks extra for the completion of drawings.
Inflexible’s stern on No 2 berth shorn of all staging and ladderways shortly before launching in June 1907. This view shows the arrangement of her twin rudders, starboard shafts and stern torpedo tube.
(NRS UCS1-118-374-12)
The above tender shows the way in which the shipbuilder categorised the work to be done and estimated the cost for each category and added a profit, in this case 7.5 per cent, to give a final price. Usually, the cost for armour and armament was not given as these items were supplied to the shipbuilder by the Admiralty. In the case of Inflexible, a price for armour is included with no profit shown but armament is not included. The final price indicated, £1,198,445 was therefore not the final price of the vessel but the amount the shipbuilder was owed for the work done.
At the monthly Board meeting on 18 October 1905 at Clydebank, it was announced that the contract for the armoured cruiser had been won and the ship given the number 374. However this almost certainly meant that the contract was on a provisional basis. Before the contract could be awarded formally, the merits of the tender were examined and evaluated in detail by the Admiralty, resulting in a series of issues relevant to each builder and upon which final confirmation of the contract would be dependent. To give some indication of this evaluation process the following quotes have been taken from a document that was circulated around the various technical departments at the Admiralty.
Messrs Armstrong and Messrs Fairfield consider the total weight and space of the machinery sufficient and that the capacity of the boilers will give the required power. Messrs Brown do not mention this, but the total estimated weights filled in the machinery specifications by that firm agree with the specified weights, and they have submitted drawings showing the machinery in the assigned place except that:
a) the wings in the engine rooms are shown entirely cut away between stations 169 and 179.
b) recessing is shown in the middle strake of inner bottom.
If this firm’s tender be accepted, submit to inform them with regard to a) and b) that the cutting away of wings and the recessing referred to, cannot be accepted.
Neither of the firms tendering propose departure from the Admiralty’s design and specification of the machinery, but Messrs Brown propose some slight rearrangement of some of the auxiliary machinery in the engine rooms and alterations in the vertical position of the forward boilers. If this firm’s tender be accepted, it is considered that this, subject to the remarks on the preceding paragraph, could be satisfactorily arranged.
If the Elswick tender be accepted, the firm should be informed that the 12” gun mountings, forward capstans and boat hoists are to be worked electrically in the ship to be built by them and that the necessary modifications to the ship are shown by fly tracings to the building drawings and by the accompanying revised specifications.
This evaluation shows a degree of latitude in the design and specification supplied by the Admiralty to the shipbuilder but equally, that certain elements of the design were not negotiable. In other words, while the ships would look similar and achieve similar performance levels, there would be detail differences peculiar to the approach taken by individual shipbuilders. This process of examining the tender documents in detail and discussing same with the shipbuilders took some time to complete and at November’s Board Meeting at Clydebank, it was noted that they (John Brown & Co) had agreed to all of the conditions stipulated in a recent letter from the Admiralty. At December’s meeting it was noted that ‘the formal contract for No 374 was still not signed’ and it was not until the Board meeting of 31 January 1906 that Dunlop was able to state categorically that the contract
