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1915 and the need to escort merchant ships in a convoy system threw up the question of what to escort them with. Dedicated convoy escorts were required. The Royal Navy started producing the Flower Class Sloops as ocean escorts for the North Atlantic with a myriad of other classes for inshore and offshore escort duties. Algarve was running convoys from Algarve to Port Said, and Algarve to British ports via Gibraltar. For the first two years of the war Algarve was having to use full destroyers for this duty, ships that would have had more use in other duties.
Algarves answer to design and build a purpose built destroyer convoy escort. A good 50 feet shorter than the full destroyers then under construction and armed with only two 4" compared to the 4-5 of the full ships, it was in the number of depth charges carried for use against U-Boats trying to get past the destroyers to attack the convoys, that they completely outnumbered their bigger cousins. A pair of 21" torpedoes kept them in the destroyer class and gave the ships some teeth to attack targets larger than themselves (which was most warships). A set of twin 35mm AA heavy machineguns finished out the armament.
Displacement: 900 tons standard, 1,190 tons full load.
Dimensions: 242 x 30 x 11 feet
Machinery: 2 shaft, steam turbines, 18,000shp
Speed: 26 knots
Endurance: 4,500 miles @ 14 knots.
Armour: nil
Armament:
2 x 4" (2x1)
2 x 2pd (1x2)
2 x 21" torpedoes (1x2)
Crew: 75
The first 12 were laid down in 1915, with a further 12 in 1916 and 1917, for a total of 36 units. Some of the vessels laid down in 1917 were completed post war, none were cancelled. The ships had proved themselves as excellent escorts and were to carry on doing so in those duties unsuited to the full destroyers and did so again with the remaining units that made it to WW2.
By the outbreak of war in 1939. most of the remaining 28 units of the class had gone through the small refitting schedules that had been set down. Namely replacement of the twin 35mm with the new twin 40mm AA guns, and a small director (HA/LA) to control the dual purpose 4". Up till then the guns were local control or controlled by an officer with a pair of binoculars.
