HMS Cobra

HMS Cobra was an experimental turbine-powered destroyer of the Royal Navy that Armstrong Whitworth built on its own account, without an order, and then offered to the Admiralty. Armstrong Whitworth laid her down at Elswick on 27 May 1898 as yard number 674 and launched her on 28 June 1899, with Parsons turbines on four shafts and a design based on the earlier destroyers Swordfish and Spitfire. The Admiralty bought her on 8 May 1900 for 70,000 pounds. On 17 September 1901 she left the Tyne for Portsmouth under Lieutenant Bosworth Smith with a mixed crew of naval men and employees of Parsons, and the next morning she broke in two off the Outer Dowsing lightvessel in heavy seas and sank, with 44 naval officers and men and 23 of the contractors staff lost and twelve saved. A court-martial blamed structural weakness, which the builders disputed, and a later committee found her weaker than most similar vessels but not clearly unsafe. The loss slowed the adoption of turbines in warships. Divers found her wreck in 2021.