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Spain (Armada española). Crucero protegido Reina Regente (1888)



The ill-fated protected cruiser Reina Regente was the head of her class of three ships (Reina Regente, Lepanto and Alfonso XIII). Designed by John H. Biles and built at Clydebank, she was a scaled-down version of the English Orlando-class cruisers. The main difference was in the reduction of the bow and stern, which was key in her loss.

The Reina Regente was heavily armed with four 240 mm Gonzalez Hontoria guns, six 120 mm, smaller guns, and five torpedo tubes. The protec-tion reached 125 mm. She reached 20 knots.

On March 10, 1895 she was sailing from Tangier (where she had left a Moroccan embassy) to Cadiz, when disappeared during a great storm in the Strait of Gibraltar, which occurred without warning and sank a number of ships. It seems that the waves submerging the bow flooded several com-partments. The cruiser then attempted to reach the nearest Algeciras, but it is believed that the flooding reached the engines or the rudder, and the ship went through the sea, capsized and sank. The entire crew of 420 officers and sailors perished. Only the dog of an ensign was saved, which was picked up by a British merchantman. When the merchantman reached Cadiz, the dog jumped into the sea, swam to shore and then went to the door of his former owner's house.

Her two twins were refurbished to reduce the upper weights, with little result. The works were very prolonged and they were not commissioned until 1896 and 1898. By then they were outdated and, in addition, their machinery proved to be very problematic. The Lepanto was decommissioned in 1908, and the Alfonso XIII in 1900, after barely four years of service as a training ship.

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Spain. Crucero protegido Alfonso XIII (1898)



At the end of the 19th century, the Spanish Navy prefers to build crui-sers and not pre-dreadnoughts, which lacked the autonomy to reach the dis-tant Caribbean or Pacific colonies. Due to the industrial backwardness, several units were commissioned in foreign shipyards to serve as models to build others in Spain. Unfortunately, the construction of these ships was delayed: of the six cruisers of the Reina Regente and Cardenal Cisneros classes, only the first had been completed on time, and was lost in a storm. Moreover, her two main units (the battleship Pelayo and the battleship cruiser Carlos V) were being modernized when in 1898 the war with the United States began. As a consequence, only four cruisers could be sent to Cuba, one without the main artillery, which had not had time to mount it.

Of the Queen Regent class cruisers, the head of the class, built in En-gland, sank during a storm. For that reason the two units that were being built were lightened, replacing the four 240 mm Hontoria guns with others of 200 mm, reducing the secondary armament, modifying the rigging and the engines. The changes made the construction of these ships very long, and the final result was bad: the stability remained poor, they were bad firing platforms, and the changes in the engines made them very unreliable.

The Alfonso XIII, was launched in 1896 without completion as training ship. She was completed just in time for the Spanish-American War, but was so troublesome that she was left to protect the Spanish coast, and was de-commissioned in 1900.

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Tu regere imperio fluctus Hispane memento

Nice work and interesting additions.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Spain. Reina Regente class protected cruiser Lepanto



The Lepanto was the third unit of the Reina Regente class, and her construction was even more problematic than that of her brother Alfonso XIII. However, the lengthy construction period allowed the incorporation of some lessons and the result was somewhat better. Even so, it was not completed in time to participate in the Spanish-American war. Moreover, when she was finished, her performance was poor, not exceeding 15 knots. She never joined the fleet and was instead used in the School of Artillery and Torpedoes. Attempting to improve her poor qualities, the four 200 mm guns were removed and replaced by 160 mm ones. Her service as a training ship was short, and was decommissioned in 1908.



This cruiser, although its poor career, is remembered for the name "Lepanto" given to the cap of the Spanish Navy sailors, a nickname that comes from when were trained on the Lepanto, wearing the cap with a strip with the ship's name on it.

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Tu regere imperio fluctus Hispane memento

Nice work.
I'm only unsure if the lines of hull shading on the bow shouldn't be bit smoother and the templates should have shipbucket.com watermark in the bottom-right corner (that's ok, I already uploaded them "as should be" ).

Sorry about the template, it was a mistake to reduce the image size to 385 px. I will fix it now.

About the shading, I haven't found good images of the hulls (few images of the cruisers have survived, and none in drydock), and it's based on a model of the Naval Museum of Madrid (I was there a few days ago, and took a hundred photos of this and other models), as well as drawings by Andrés López and Erlenmeyer (not in Shipbucket scale), and drawings of other ships of the period.

P.D.: Already fixed

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Tu regere imperio fluctus Hispane memento