HMS Lancaster (1902)

HMS Lancaster was one of ten Monmouth-class armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the twentieth century, intended to protect British merchant shipping from fast French cruisers. Armstrong Whitworth laid her down at Elswick on 4 March 1901 and launched her on 22 March 1902, and she was completed on 5 April 1904. She was 463 feet long, displaced about 9,800 long tons, and her two triple-expansion engines and 31 Belleville boilers gave 22,000 indicated horsepower and a trial speed of 24 knots. Her armament was fourteen 6-inch guns, four of them in two twin turrets and the rest in casemates, six of which could be used only in calm weather. She served in the Mediterranean until 1912, then on the North America and West Indies Station, where she searched for German raiders in 1914, and with the Grand Fleet in 1915. She went to the Pacific in 1916, became flagship of the Eastern Squadron in 1918 and was sold for scrap in March 1920. Her twin 6-inch guns are now displayed at Stanley in the Falkland Islands.