The nominal battery of 12-pounder and 3-pounder guns was only a baseline, because individual sloops accumulated a remarkably varied assortment of weapons. Two cylindrical boilers and a four-cylinder triple-expansion engine drove a single screw. Engineers extracted the power needed for 17 knots even though the stated design figures fell short of the roughly 2,200 indicated horsepower required. Coal endurance and occasional mine-carrying improvisations underline how flexibly crews employed these workmanlike ships.
Chapter · 9:18-13:15
Improvised weapons and hard-driven machinery
The class combined variable wartime armament with simple coal-fired machinery whose crews pushed beyond its nominal design output.