HMS Tiger

Tiger was the sole battlecruiser authorised in the 1911–12 Naval Programme, laid down at the John Brown and Company shipyard in Clydebank on 6 June 1912, launched on 15 December 1913 and commissioned on 3 October 1914 at a cost of £2,593,100 including armament. At the outbreak of the First World War she was the most heavily armoured British battlecruiser afloat: a 9-inch Krupp cemented waterline belt amidships, a 6-inch upper belt, and — unlike her predecessors — an additional 6-inch strake protecting her secondary guns. A lower armour strake below the main belt was based on that of the Vickers-built Japanese battlecruiser Kongo, the only design influence traceable to that ship.

Her main battery was eight 13.5-inch guns in four twin turrets, firing 1,400-pound shells to 23,740 yards, with twelve 6-inch guns in casemates. Two paired sets of Brown-Curtis direct-drive turbines, fed by 39 Babcock & Wilcox boilers in five boiler rooms, were designed for 85,000 shaft horsepower and 108,000 when forced; on trials she beat her designed 28 knots by over a knot. Her fuel stowage of 7,140 long tons of oil and coal far exceeded Queen Mary's 4,800. The military historian John Keegan later called her 'certainly the most beautiful warship in the world then, and perhaps ever'.

Tiger joined the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron still shaking down — Beatty told the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, that she was 'not yet fit to fight', with three of her four dynamos out of action. On 24 January 1915 she met the enemy anyway. Admiral Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers had sortied to sweep the Dogger Bank, but the British were reading their coded messages and intercepted them. In the pursuit Tiger ran with Lion and Princess Royal at 27 knots, the squadron's fire falling first on the trailing armoured cruiser Blücher, which was battered, jammed in her steering, and eventually sunk.

When Beatty signalled 'Engage the corresponding ships in the enemy's line', Captain Henry Pelly — believing Indomitable was already engaging Blücher — fired on Seydlitz, as did Lion, leaving Moltke free to pound Lion unmolested. Tiger took six German shells, the worst a 28 cm hit that burst on the roof of 'Q' turret, wrecking the left gun's breech and jamming the training gear. Ten of her men were killed and eleven wounded. Her own shooting was rapid but wild: two hits from 355 13.5-inch shells fired, one each on Seydlitz and Derfflinger.

The senior leadership noticed. Fisher called Pelly a 'poltroon' and judged Tiger's gunnery 'villainously bad on January 24, yet she seems to have had a lot of practice'. Beatty's memorandum of 11 February went through her part in the battle blow by blow, comparing it to that of the other ships, and explained where Pelly had misconstrued the standing orders — but ended generously. He wished to express no censure: a newly commissioned ship in her first action had many difficulties to contend with, and his chief aim was 'to ensure that our next action shall be a complete success'. Tiger was refitted that December.

At Jutland on 31 May 1916, Tiger sailed with the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron in Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet, sent out on decoded German radio traffic to intercept the High Seas Fleet. In the phase remembered as the 'Run to the South', the Germans opened fire first at 15:48 at under 18,000 yards. Tiger, rearmost of her squadron and closest to the enemy, missed Beatty's fire-distribution signal — as did Queen Mary — and engaged Moltke instead of Seydlitz. Moltke's reply was accurate from the start: six hits on Tiger inside the first seven minutes, two of which temporarily disabled both 'Q' and 'X' turrets.

The battlecruisers around her fared far worse. Indefatigable blew up around 16:03 with the loss of all hands but three. Around 16:25 Queen Mary, only 500 yards ahead of Tiger, was hit repeatedly and her forward magazines exploded — Tiger had to put her helm hard-a-starboard to avoid colliding with the wreckage. By the time Beatty turned north to draw the High Seas Fleet onto the Grand Fleet, Tiger had been hit seventeen times, all but one by Moltke, yet remained fit to fight; she fought on through the evening actions against Hipper's battlecruisers and Mauve's pre-dreadnoughts.

In all she took eighteen hits at Jutland, suffering 24 killed and 46 wounded, and fired 303 main-battery shells for one credited hit on Moltke and two on Von der Tann, plus 136 six-inch rounds at the light cruiser Wiesbaden and German destroyers. She reached Rosyth on 2 June and was the first of the 'Splendid Cats' back out of dockyard hands, repaired by 1 July. Jutland's lesson in plunging shellfire brought her some 300 tons of extra armour over turret roofs and magazines.

Tiger served as temporary flagship of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron while Lion was under repair, and sailed with the Grand Fleet's 29 dreadnoughts and six battlecruisers on 18–19 August 1916, when conflicting intelligence let the German fleet slip home unfought. She covered the British light forces at the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917 without coming within range, and otherwise spent the rest of the war on uneventful North Sea patrols, both fleets essentially forbidden to risk further losses. Wartime refits stacked rangefinders along her length and put flying-off platforms for aircraft on her turrets.

She was the oldest battlecruiser the Royal Navy retained after the Washington Naval Treaty's tonnage limits took effect in 1922. From 1924 she served as a seagoing gunnery training ship, then returned to the Battlecruiser Squadron in 1929 to hold the line while Hood underwent a long refit. Though still in reasonable condition, she was discarded under the London Naval Treaty of 1930 as part of a general reduction in the world's battleship fleets.

She collided with the battleship Royal Sovereign in late 1920 while with the Atlantic Fleet, went into reserve on 22 August 1921, and was refitted in 1922 with a 25-foot rangefinder on 'X' turret and four 4-inch anti-aircraft guns in place of her original pair of 3-inch. Her last commanders were Captain Kenneth Dewar, in 1928–29, and Arthur Bedford. When Hood came out of refit in early 1931, Tiger took the cheers of the Atlantic Fleet at Devonport on 30 March, paid off at Rosyth on 15 May, and was sold to Thos. W. Ward of Inverkeithing in February 1932 for breaking up.