page_title: Swiftsure-class battleship
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Swiftsure-class battleship / Design and description / Background
caption_attribution_description: Right elevation and deck plan of British Swiftsure class battleship. Numbers on top diagram show armour thickness (shaded areas) in inches. Numbers on bottom diagram show size of guns in inches.
context_page_description: The Swiftsure class was a group of two British pre-dreadnought battleships. Originally ordered by Chile as the Constitución class during a period of high tension with Argentina, they were intended to defeat a pair of armoured cruisers ordered by the latter country and were optimized for this role. This meant that they were smaller and more lightly armed than most battleships of the time. They were purchased by the United Kingdom in 1903 prior to their completion to prevent their purchase by the Russian Empire as tensions were rising between them and the Japanese Empire, a British ally. Completed the following year, Swiftsure and Triumph had roughly similar careers for the first decade of their service careers. They were initially assigned to the Home Fleet and Channel Fleets before being transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1909. Both ships rejoined Home Fleet in 1912 and were transferred abroad in 1913, Swiftsure to the East Indies Station as its flagship, and Triumph to the China Station.
  After the beginning of World War I in August 1914, Swiftsure escorted troop convoys in the Indian Ocean until she was transferred to the Suez Canal Patrol in December.
context_section_description: In late 1901, Chile and Argentina were on the brink of war, and Chile was concerned about its navy's ability to counter the armoured cruisers Rivadavia and Mariano Moreno, which Argentina had ordered from Italy earlier that year. Sir Edward Reed, chief designer for Armstrong Whitworth, was in Chile for health reasons at the time, and met with Chilean Navy officials to discuss the idea of purchasing or building two battleships with high speed and a powerful armament on a low displacement. Purchase of existing ships was not a practical option, so the Chileans asked Reed to design the ships for construction in the United Kingdom. Chile ordered the ships, to be named Constitución and Libertad, in 1901, Constitución from Armstrong Whitworth at Elswick and Libertad from Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness.
  The ships were considered second-class battleships, lightly constructed, armed, and armoured by British standards; Swiftsure, in fact, suffered from structural weakness while in service and required hull strengthening, although Triumph did not have such problems. Chile had required the ships to fit into the graving dock at Talcahuano, so they had to be longer and narrower for their displacement than ships built to British standards. Details in mast and anchor arrangements as well as the arrangement of magazines and shell-handling rooms also were different from British standards.
  As part of the Pacts of May, which ended the near-war tensions between Argentina and Chile, Argentina sold its two armored cruisers, Rivadavia and Moreno, that were under construction in Italy to Japan. Constitución and Libertad were put up for sale in early 1903. While the United Kingdom was not entirely interested in the ships, international politics took precedence: when the Russian Empire made an offer for the ships, the British grew concerned that the Swiftsure class could be used against their new ally Japan. To prevent this, the British purchased both Chilean battleships on 3 December 1903 for £2,432,000.
  Their purchase by the Admiralty was organised by the London firm of Antony Gibbs & Sons, a partnership run by Alban Gibbs and his younger brother Vicary Gibbs. Both were Members of Parliament (MPs), and their role in the transaction meant that they were disqualified from the House of Commons, under an old law which debarred MPs from accepting contracts from the Crown. This triggered two by-elections, in which Alban was re-elected unopposed, but Vicary lost his seat.
  Although they were designed to Chilean rather than British requirements and required some modifications during construction after their purchase, no major changes were needed to the design to render them suitable for British service. Both were completed in June 1904 and entered service with the Royal Navy, Constitución as Swiftsure and Libertad as HMS Triumph.
caption: Right elevation and deck plan as depicted in Brassey's Naval Annual 1915
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