HMS Calliope was a Calypso-class corvette of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. It served from 1887 until 1951, when the old corvette was sold for breaking. It was known for being the only ship present to avoid being sunk or stranded in the tropical cyclone that struck Apia, Samoa in 1889.
About HMS Calliope (1884) in brief
HMS Calliope was a Calypso-class corvette of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. It served from 1887 until 1951, when the old corvette was sold for breaking. The vessel was known for being the only ship present to avoid being sunk or stranded in the tropical cyclone that struck Apia, Samoa in 1889. It was part of a long line of cruiser classes built for protecting trade routes and colonial police work. The ship was laid down in 1881, but not launched until 1884, and was placed in reserve at Portsmouth before completion. In 1887 Captain Coey Kane assigned the vessel to the China Station, the Australia Station, and the cruiser in New Zealand at the end of that year. In early 1888 Calliopes was sent to watch over a looming diplomatic crisis in Samoa, as well as the division of Africa and the Pacific in the last decades of the 19th century. The German Empire, invigorated by its victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War, looked to the Pacific as a potential confrontation in the 1880s and 1890s. The British Empire was the largest on Earth, and Britain protected that empire and its trade routes with the world’s largest navy. The Royal Navy was the instrument by which the Pax Britannica was kept. The vessel nevertheless was a fully rigged sailing ship, allowing sustained service in areas where coaling stations were far apart.
The only armour was a 1. 5-inch armoured deck covering the machinery spaces, but coal bunkers along the sides gave some protection to the machinery space. The compound-expansion steam engine was supplied with steam by six boilers and developed 4,023 indicated horsepower. This was 50% more powerful than the predecessor class, which gave the corvette one more knot of speed, a difference that would be crucial in the disaster that made calliope famous. The engine drove a single feathering screw, and enabled the ship to reach a speed of 13¾ knots, or 14¾ knots with forced draught. The hull was timber-cased and coppered below the waterline, in the same manner as wooden ships. It had four 6-inch breechloaders in sponsons fore and aft on each side, twelve 5- inch breech loaders in broadside between the 6- inch guns, and six quick-firing Nordenfelts. The class was designed to operate across the vast distances of Britain’s maritime empire, and could not rely on dry docks for maintenance. In the same year, all corvettes and frigates were re-classified as “cruisers”, with Calliopes falling into the third-class cruiser category.
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