HMS Champion (1915)

HMS Champion (1915)

HMS Champion was a C-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy.

Eight light cruisers were ordered for the Royal Navy in the 1913 budget. The six ships of the Caroline class used conventional direct drive turbine engines but two, Champion and Calliope had experimental engine designs using geared reduction to match optimum working speeds of turbines and propellers. This followed experimental designs ordered in 1911 using geared high pressure turbines for the destroyers Badger and Beaver and in 1912 using gearing for both high pressure and low pressure turbines in destroyers Leonidas and Lucifer. Champion and Calliope trialled different designs.

Champion had two propellor shafts, the port being driven from the sternmost engine room and starboard from forward. Gearing increased overall engine efficiency, allowing a reduction in boiler and turbine size for a given force provided by the propellers, so the initial design reduced the boiler room size and nominal developed power from 40,000 shp to 37,500 shp. However, during construction modifications were made to again increase boiler capacity and add cruising turbines which returned to the nominal power output of the Caroline class ungeared ships. Maximum Propeller speed was a nominal 340 rpm. Trials comparing Champion to Caroline showed that at actual developed power of 41,000 shp in both ships, Champion achieved a speed of 29.5 knots using 470 tons of fuel per day, while Caroline achieved 29 knots using 550 tons of fuel per day. The ship could achieve 28 knots operating at the lower power of 31,000 shp.