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The ''Frolic''-class gunvessels were a class of composite gunboats built for the Royal Navy in the early 1870s. They were generally deployed overseas to the East Indies, West Africa, and China Stations. In addition to showing the flag, the ships fought pirates and suppressed the slave trade in East Africa. They were placed in reserve in the mid-1880s, and two of them were sold for scrap by the end of the decade. The other pair survived for longer as they were either modified for harbour service or became a training ship before being sold or scrapped. The last survivor, ''Ready'', was used in support of William Beebe's expedition in his bathysphere in 1930 near Bermuda. ==Design and description== The four ships of the ''Frolic'' class were repeats of the preceding ''Beacon'' class despite being begun four years later.〔Ballard, pp. 137–38〕 The ships were long between perpendiculars and had a beam of . Forward, the ships had a draught of , but aft they drew . They displaced as built and had a burthen of 462 tons.〔Winfield, p. 294〕 The depth of hold was and the hull was subdivided by watertight bulkheads.〔Ballard, pp. 135–36〕 Their crew consisted of 80 officers and enlisted men.〔 The supply of engines from the old Crimean War gunboats had been exhausted by that time and they were given brand-new engines.〔 Unlike their half sisters, these ships received new compound-expansion trunk steam engines from John Penn and Sons. Each engine powered a single propeller. The engines produced between which gave the ships a maximum speed between . The new engines proved to be more powerful than those used in the ''Beacon''s, but they were as uneconomical as the simple steam engines used in the older ships and fell from favour as a result. Three cylindrical boilers provided steam to the engines at a working pressure of .〔Ballard, pp. 138–39〕 The ships carried of coal which gave them a range of at 10 knots.〔 The hull shape of the ''Frolic''s was identical to that of their predecessors and they had a very full hull shape with squared-off bilges and a flat bottom. Admiral G. A. Ballard commented that they were built "along the lines of an extremely elongated packing crate."〔Ballard, p. 135〕 This made them steady gun platforms and gave them quite a bit of buoyancy. If they ran aground, this shape allowed them to be pulled off easily and they remained upright if stranded by a receding tide. However, this hull shape made their steering erratic at low speeds or in a following sea and they made a large amount of leeway in a strong side breeze.〔 The class was barque rigged and their best speed under sail alone was over if running before the wind, despite the drag of the propellers, which could neither be hoisted out of the water, nor feathered. In a headwind, Ballard described them as "quite unmanageable under sail alone" because of their shallow draft and flat bottom. Their funnels were hinged to lower horizontally to reduce wind resistance while under sail. A poop deck was added in between commissions, but this was the only major structural change made during their careers.〔Ballard, pp. 136, 138, 140–41〕 The ships were initially armed with a mix of 7-inch and 64-pounder 56 cwt〔"cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 56 cwt referring to the weight of the gun.〕 rifled muzzle-loading guns and a pair of 20-pounder rifled breechloading guns. The and 64-pounder guns were mounted on the centreline as pivot guns while the two 20-pounder guns were mounted at the bow and stern as chase guns.〔Ballard, p. 136〕 The 16-calibre 7-inch gun weighed and fired a shell. It was credited with the nominal ability to penetrate armour.〔Chesneau & Kolesnik, p. 6〕 A lighter, , 7-inch gun developed in the 1870s replaced the heavier gun in ''Frolic'' and it replaced both heavy guns in ''Rifleman''.〔Ballard, p. 137〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frolic-class gunvessel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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