HMS Harrier (1894): From Bombarding Crete to Sweeping Mines in the Great War

Built Under the Naval Defence Act

HMS Harrier was built at Devonport Dockyard and launched on 20 February 1894, a Dryad-class torpedo gunboat ordered under the Naval Defence Act of 1889, sweeping legislation that had committed Britain to maintaining a fleet larger than the next two naval powers combined.

She measured 262 feet 6 inches in length, displaced 1,070 tons and could make 18.2 knots from twin screws driven by two triple expansion steam engines producing 3,500 indicated horsepower, with a crew of 120 officers and sailors.

Her armament combined two QF 4.7-inch guns and four 6-pounder guns with a five-barrelled Nordenfelt machine gun and five 18-inch torpedo tubes, a heavy fit for a comparatively small vessel, reflecting the torpedo gunboat's original purpose of hunting down the fast torpedo boats that had begun to threaten larger, slower capital ships.

Bombarding Crete

HMS Harrier commissioned for service on the Mediterranean Station, and in February 1897 deployed to Crete as part of an International Squadron assembled by the major European powers to intervene in the island's escalating unrest against Ottoman rule.

On 21 February 1897, she took part in a naval bombardment against Cretan insurgents, a truly uncomfortable episode of great power intervention in a complicated local conflict, the kind of action that made perfect sense to the diplomats and admirals ordering it while looking rather less straightforward to those actually caught in the middle of it on the ground.

HMS Harrier continued on Mediterranean Station duty and later served in the Persian Gulf, including assignments at Constantinople and various regional ports, the kind of steady imperial policing work that occupied a great many smaller Royal Navy vessels during the decades before the First World War.

Minesweeping in the Great War

HMS Harrier was converted for minesweeping duties during the First World War, a role increasingly common for older gunboats whose original torpedo-hunting purpose had been rendered largely obsolete by newer classes of destroyer, but whose sturdy hulls and reasonable size still made them remarkably useful for the dangerous, unglamorous work of clearing enemy mines.

As part of that conversion, two of her original torpedo tubes were removed to make room for the necessary sweeping equipment.

A Quiet End

HMS Harrier was sold to T.R. Sales at Haulbowline, Cork, on 23 February 1920 for commercial use, closing out the career of a gunboat that had, over more than a quarter of a century of service, gone from bombarding Cretan insurgents alongside the combined fleets of Europe to the rather less dramatic but remarkably essential business of sweeping mines during the First World War.