The Duke of Edinburgh-class was a class of six armoured cruisers built around 1905 for the British Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

. The later four ships were armed differently, and are sometimes considered as a separate class, the Warrior-class.

They were the first ships to come from the new Director of Naval Construction

Director of Naval Construction

The Director of Naval Construction was a senior British civil servant post in the Admiralty, that part of the British Civil Service that oversaw the Royal Navy. The post existed from 1860 to 1966....

, Philip Watts

Philip Watts (naval architect)

Sir Philip Watts, KCB FRS was a British naval architect, famous for his design of the revolutionary Elswick cruiser and the HMS Dreadnought.-Early life:...

.

The main armament of six 9.2 inch guns was distributed in two centreline turrets (one fore and one aft with wide angles of fire) and four turrets disposed in the corners about the funnels. The secondary was 5 single gun 6-inch barbettes either side. The remainder was some twenty 3-pounder guns concentrated around the masts – 10 fore and 10 aft.

The Warriors replaced the 6 inch barbettes with four 7.5 inch gun turrets on the same deck as the centre main armament.

Service

Natal blew up in December 1915 due to an internal explosion.
Warrior, Duke of Edinburgh and Black Prince were at the Battle of Jutland

Battle of Jutland

The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...

 having joined the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet. Black Prince and Warrior were lost at Jutland.
Cochrane and Achilles were in the 2nd Cruiser Squadron. Achilles was undergoing refit and missed Jutland. Cochrane ran aground in the River Mersey

River Mersey

The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....

 in November 1918 and was scrapped. The other survivors of the war were scrapped or sold for scrap by 1921.

Building programme

The following table gives the build details and purchase cost of the members of the Duke of Edinburgh class. Whilst standard British practice at that time was for these costs to exclude armament and stores, the cost quoted in The Naval Annual

Brassey's Naval Annual

The Naval Annual was a book that sought to bring together a large amount of information on naval subjects, which had hitherto been obtainable only by consulting numerous publications and chiefly from foreign sources...

 for this class includes armament.

Ship	Builder	Engine maker	Laid down	Launch date	Completed	Cost according to BNA Brassey's Naval Annual The Naval Annual was a book that sought to bring together a large amount of information on naval subjects, which had hitherto been obtainable only by consulting numerous publications and chiefly from foreign sources...  1914
Duke of Edinburgh class
Duke of Edinburgh HMS Duke of Edinburgh (1904) HMS Duke of Edinburgh was the lead ship of the armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser and light cruiser...	Pembroke Dockyard	Hawthorn Leslie	11 Feb 1903	14 Jun 1904	20 Jan 1906	£1,201,687 *
Black Prince HMS Black Prince (1904) HMS Black Prince was a armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. During the First World War she served in the Mediterranean before joining the Grand Fleet...	Thames Ironworks Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company The Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, Limited was a shipyard and iron works straddling the mouth of Bow Creek at its confluence with the River Thames, at Leamouth Wharf on the west side and at Canning Town on the east side... , Blackwall	Thames Ironworks Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company The Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, Limited was a shipyard and iron works straddling the mouth of Bow Creek at its confluence with the River Thames, at Leamouth Wharf on the west side and at Canning Town on the east side...	3 Jun 1903	8 Nov 1904	17 Mar 1906	£1,193,414 *
Warrior class
Warrior HMS Warrior (1905) HMS Warrior was a Duke of Edinburgh-class armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser and light cruiser . Warrior was transferred to the Grand Fleet in...	Pembroke Dockyard	Wallsend	5 Nov 1903	25 Nov 1905	12 Dec 1906	£1,186,395 *
Cochrane HMS Cochrane (1905) HMS Cochrane was a armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy before the First World War. She served in the 2nd Cruiser Squadron during the war under Rear-Admiral Herbert Heath, taking part in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. She was based in Murmansk in mid-1918 during the Allied intervention in the...	Fairfield, Govan Govan Govan is a district and former burgh now part of southwest City of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated west of Glasgow city centre, on the south bank of the River Clyde, opposite the mouth of the River Kelvin and the district of Partick....	Fairfield	24 Mar 1904	20 May 1905	18 Feb 1907	£1,193,121 *
Achilles HMS Achilles (1905) HMS Achilles was a armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. She served with the 2nd Cruiser Squdron for most of the First World War. Achilles did not participate in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, but did sink the German raider Leopard in 1917...	Armstrong, Elswick	Hawthorn	22 Feb 1904	17 Jun 1905	22 Apr 1907	£1,191,103 *
Natal HMS Natal (1905) HMS Natal was a Duke of Edinburgh-class armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. She escorted the royal yacht in 1911–1912 for the newly-crowned King George V's trip to India to attend the Delhi Durbar. During World War I the ship was assigned to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of the...	Vickers, Barrow	Vickers	6 Jan 1904	30 Sep 1905	5 Mar 1907	£1,218,244 *

* = estimated cost, including guns

External Links

• The Dreadnought Project Technical details of the Duke of Edinburgh class.
• The Dreadnought Project Technical details of the Warrior class.