The torpedo boat tender was a type of warship developed at the end of the 19th century to help bring small torpedo boat to the high seas, and launch them for attack.
During the Turko-Russian war in 1877, the Russians requisitionned 19 trade vessels to convert them as torpedo boat tenders. Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin was the first historical vessel in this new ship class. She was captained by Stepan Makarov, who was major naval engineer, early practitioner of torpedo usage and the author of concept of torpedo boat tender. On 14th January 1878, Makarov performed the first successful attack by self-propelled torpedoes in history. The Turkish ship Intibah was destroyed by torpedo boats launched from Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin.
In 1878, the British Navy commissioned the Hecla as a torpedo boat tender, followed by HMS Vulcan (1889). The 1896 French ship Foudre was a torpedo boat tender, before it was converted to a seaplane carrier.
During War World II, the type evolved and in the US adopted the designation of Motor torpedo boat tender (AGP, or "Patrol Craft Tender", according to the United States Navy hull classification system).
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Famous quotes containing the words boat and/or tender:
“The water which supports a boat can also sink it.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)