HMS Gorgon (1914) - Construction and Description

Construction and Description

Nidaros was laid down by Armstrong Whitworth at Elswick on 11 June 1913 and launched on 9 June 1914. She was renamed as Gorgon, after an earlier breastwork monitor of 1871. Her completion was greatly delayed by the modifications made by the British, which included modifying the boilers to use both oil and coal and conversion of 12 double-bottom tanks to carry oil. This work began on 9 January 1915, but was suspended the following May, when it was estimated that only another 10-12 months of work remained, to allow for faster progress to be made on the large light cruisers Furious and Courageous that were building in Armstrong's Naval Yard downriver. In September 1917, work was resumed on a new design that added a large anti-torpedo bulge along about 75% of the hull's length, suppression of the torpedo tubes and the 100-millimetre (3.9 in) guns planned by the Norwegians, and a large tripod mast was fitted behind the single funnel to carry the directors for both the 6-inch (152 mm) and 9.2-inch (230 mm) guns. Both of the these guns had to be relined to use standard British ammunition and the mount for the 9.2-inch gun was modified to give a maximum elevation of 40° which gave the gun a maximum range of 39,000 yards (36,000 m). Addition of the bulges cost 2 knots (3.7 km/h; 2.3 mph) in speed, but prevented the extra weight resulting from all of these changes from deepening her draft. She was finally completed on 4 June 1918.

Gorgon displaced 5,700 long tons (5,800 t) at deep load as built, with a length of 310 feet (94.5 m), a beam of 73 feet 7 inches (22.4 m) at maximum, although her main hull only had a beam of 55 feet (16.8 m) and a draught of 16 feet 4 inches (5.0 m). She was powered by two vertical triple expansion steam engines, which developed a total of 4,000 indicated horsepower (3,000 kW) from four Yarrow watertube boilers and gave a maximum speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph).

She was armed with two 9.2-inch guns arranged in two single-gun turrets, one turret each fore and aft. Her secondary armament consisted of four six-inch guns, also in single gun turrets, two of which superfired over the 9.2-inch turrets and the others were positioned on each side of the superstructure. One 3 in (76 mm) anti-aircraft gun was mounted on each center-line six-inch turret. She also carried four 3-pounder and four 2-pounder guns on high-angle mounts.