Armed Boarding Steamers

During the summer of 1915 it was decided to replace the armed merchant cruisers (the three Empresses) operating out of Aden with much smaller vessels more suited to the task of stopping and checking the papers of neutral steamers in the southern Red Sea, as well as boarding (and if necessary chasing) and searching dhows to see if they were carrying prohibited items as part of the blockade of the Arabian Red Sea coast in Turkish hands. The ship most suited to this was the Armed Boarding Steamer. 

The three armed boarding steamers described below were all of a similar size – having a gross tonnage of a little over 2,000 tons. All three were commissioned between July and October 1915, it having been decided in June that the Empresses were not the right size of ship for operating in the Red Sea. (See article entitled ‘2 months in the life of an Empress’ to appreciate how many of the tasks were a bit mundane for an 16,000 ton liner.)

Another reason for replacing the Empresses was that the threat of August 1914 was at the bottom of the sea by July 1915! The six German light cruisers that were at large at the outbreak of war and that might have been used for raiding had all been sunk or destroyed. In fact only two of the six, the Emden and the Karlsruhe had been used as raiders – and both had been very successful. Of the two the Emden was the only raider that might have attacked Aden. Even if more cruisers could have broken out of the North sea into the Atlantic, the Germans needed all their remaining light cruisers in their heavily outnumbered High Seas Fleet.

HMS Perth

The epitome of the armed boarding steamer was HMS Perth. Until the outbreak of war the Perth has been employed as a coastal steamer in the North Sea. She belonged to the Dundee, Perth and London Shipping Company and provided a regular service between the two Scottish ports and London. This service was withdrawn on the North Sea becoming a war zone and the Perth became an obvious candidate to be taken over by the Admiralty. 

She was commissioned as HMS Perth at Dundee on 23 October 1915 whilst she was being armed with three 4.7-inch guns, these and other alterations bringing her gross tonnage to a little over 2,000 tons.  She sailed from Dundee towards the end of November and arrived in Aden on 17 December 1915. She had maintained a steady (and respectable, for a ship almost 20 years old) cruising speed around 13.5 knots –importantly only using 30 tons of coal a day, about a ninth of the quantity that an Empress would have used at the same speed.

The Perth in UK before her conversion to Armed Boarding Steamer

Three days later she left Aden for Perim, which was to become her base of operations for much of the rest of the war. Typically she would be on patrol for about 18 hours a day, which included most of the hours of darkness, the part of each day favoured by the blockade runners. She would stop and check the documents of most neutral ships she encountered, but her main task was to look out for dhows carrying prohibited items of cargo to the Turkish-held part of the Arabian coast. Dhows would be stopped (and if necessary chased), their manifests scrutinised and the ship searched if it was thought she might be a blockade-runner. Prohibited items would be confiscated and if necessary the dhow taken to Perim. 

 

HMS Lunka

HMS Lunka was another ship commissioned as an armed boarding steamer. Built in 1904 for British India S N Co her gross tonnage, in spite of having two funnels, was only 2178 tons. Her armament was interesting: one 6-inch and two 4.7-inch.

Built as a passenger and cargo steamer she had a quite reasonable top speed of 17 knots, sufficient for her role. She was commissioned in July 1915 for service as an armed boarding steamer in the Red Sea. The photograph shows the Lunka at Alexandria in 1915, soon after her conversion. It was the Lunka, when patrolling out of Perim in October 1916, that intercepted the French blockade-runner Henry de Monfreid’s dhow some 10 miles southwest of Mocha.

HMS Lunka
Note the special gun deck above the stern to give the gun (visible in the photo) an uninterrupted 360 degree traverse
 

 

HMS Suva

The Suva had been built in 1906 for use in the Pacific carrying fruit from Fiji to Australia. Like the Perth and the Lunka she had a gross tonnage a little over 2,000 – in her case 2,229 tons. On 21 October 1915 the Suva was in Alexandra Dock in Bombay. Her crew for her new role were found from the Empress of Asia, recently arrived and about to be de-commissioned as a warship.

On the 22^nd she entered dry dock where she was to remain for more than three months. On the 26^th and 27^th her foremost guns were dismounted, and some cabins gutted for other use. [This dismounting of guns seems strange at the start of her commission, but perhaps was a reason for her long conversion]. She finally was ready for sea in early December, having taken on 746 tons of coal, which was nearly the capacity of her bunkers. At a cruising speed of around 13 knots this tonnage would give her an endurance of about 20-25 days.

HMS Suva

She sailed for Aden on the 16^th, arriving there on the 21^st having sailed at about 12-13 knots in a ‘moderate monsoon’. She stayed at Aden for only 18 hours as her base for the first part of this commission was to be Suez, where she arrived on 27 December. For the next five months she was first on the Gulf of Suez patrol and then the Northern Red Sea patrol. Towards the end of May she sailed South for Aden, via Perim where she patrolled for four days before proceeding on to Aden.

The Suva remained six days in Aden at the end of which 65 sheep and 12 bundles of fodder were loaded on to be taken to Perim, out of which she patrolled for a couple of days. She then sailed North again and her activities were once more outside the Aden area of interest. Although she had replaced an Empress working out of Aden, the Suva would spend much of her time operating out of Suez. It is worth mentioning, however, that in late June she had two of her holds filled with grain at Port Sudan, to be taken to Jeddah together with 105 (live) sheep.

As well as operating in the northern half of the red Sea the Suva also patrolled for some months in 1917 out of Colombo. Of interest here is the fact that in early May minesweepers were sweeping the approaches to Colombo every morning at first light (see Guardships and the threat of mines off Aden in March 1917). The Suva was back at Perim on 31 May 1917, her boilers having consumed 33 tons of coal a day sailing at just over 12 knots all the way from Colombo.