The Kingfishers tested how small a practical sloop could be. Nine ships of roughly 520 to 590 tons represented a marked reduction from the approximately thousand-ton designs discussed before them. Their simple armament combined a single four-inch gun, a quadruple half-inch machine-gun mounting, and depth charges. Nicholas Monsarrat's service in Guillemot and Shearwater connects these small ships with the author of The Cruel Sea. Their limited equipment reflects the experiment in minimum size, rather than the heavier specialist fit later associated with the Black Swans.
Notable Point · 8:15:59-8:18:00
Kingfisher: testing the smallest practical sloop
A small hull and basic armament made the Kingfishers an interwar experiment in the minimum useful sloop.