Adventure Class Scout Cruisers

Adventure Class.  The only of the four pairs of Scout cruisers of this group to have four funnels.  The last of the group they were the considered the best of the four designs and influenced future Admiralty in-house' designs.  Originally to be named Eddystone but the name was altered prior to construction.

HMS Adventure
Built Armstrong, Elswick, laid down January 1904, completed October 1905.

HMS Attentive
Built Armstrong, Elswick, laid down January 1904, completed October 1905.

Average cost £275,000.

Size:
Length 374 feet pp 395 feet overall, beam 38 feet 3 inches, draught 12 feet 3 inches, displacement 2,640 tons load.

Propulsion:
2 shaft TE engines, 16,000 ihp, 25kts

Trials:
Adventure 15,850 ihp = 25.42 knots
Attentive 16,195 ihp = 25.6 knots

Armour:
2-0.5in decks

Armament:
10 x 12 pounder QF (10 x 1), 8 x 3 pounder QF (8 x 1), 2 x 18in TT

Comments:
One of four pairs of Scouts ordered to a general specification with the exact design left up to the individual builders.  Not long after completion the two additional 12 pounder guns were added and the 3 pounder guns were replaced with 6 x 6 pounders.  In 1911-12 they were reamed with 9 x 4 inch guns.  Crew 268.

World War 1 Service:
Adventure
6th Destroyer Flotilla at Dover.
May 1915 6th Light Cruiser Squadron Humber.
July 1915 Flagship at Queenstown.
April 1918 Mediterranean.
1920 sold for scrap.

Attentive
6th Destroyer Flotilla at Dover.
7 September 1915 Damaged by German aircraft near Ostend.
23 April 1918 took part in the Zeebrugge Raid.
1918 Gibraltar.
1918 Murmansk.
1920 Sold for scrap.

HMS Attentive.  Although the class had been rearmed with 4inch guns these were outranged by those of many German destroyers and by the end of the war she carried a gun armament of 2 x 6 inch guns  6 x 4inch guns, a 3 inch anti-aircraft gun but no torpedo tubes.