Forward-class cruiser

The Forward class was a pair of scout cruisers, Forward and Foresight, built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The Admiralty developed scout cruisers in 1901 and 1902 to lead destroyer flotillas in torpedo attacks and support them when other destroyers attacked, and in May 1902 it asked for tenders for a ship able to make 25 knots, with a protective deck and an armament of quick-firing 12-pounder guns. Four builders were accepted and each was to build one ship, repeated in the following year's programme, and the two Fairfield ships became the Forward class. They were 365 feet between perpendiculars, displaced about 2,850 tons at normal load and were driven by two triple-expansion steam engines fed by a dozen Thornycroft boilers, with a design output of 16,500 indicated horsepower. Foresight was launched on 8 October 1904. The pair spent much of their first decade in reserve, and soon proved too slow as newer destroyers outpaced them. In the First World War Foresight served on the Dover Patrol and in the English Channel and Forward on the Yorkshire coast, where she was present at the German bombardment of Hartlepool in December 1914. Both went to the Mediterranean in 1915 and the Aegean in 1916, and were broken up in 1920 and 1921.