S 90 Class Torpedo Boat (1899)

Eleven S 90 class torpedo boats were completed for the Imperial German Navy in 1899-1900.

Overview of 11 vessels
Citations for this data available on individual ship pages
Name	Builder	Laid Down	Launched	Completed	Fate
S 90	Schichau, Elbing	1898	26 Jul, 1899	24 Oct, 1899	Scuttled 17 Oct, 1914
S 91	Schichau, Elbing	1898	25 Sep, 1899	24 Apr, 1900	Sold 26 Mar, 1921
S 92	Schichau, Elbing		15 May, 1900	27 Jun, 1900	Sold 26 Mar, 1921
S 93	Schichau, Elbing		24 Mar, 1900	14 Jul, 1900	Sold 26 Mar, 1921
S 94	Schichau, Elbing		23 Apr, 1900	27 Jul, 1900	Sold 13 May, 1921
S 95	Schichau, Elbing		20 Feb, 1900	29 Oct, 1900	Sold 13 May, 1921
S 96	Schichau, Elbing		31 Jan, 1900	27 Sep, 1900	Sold 26 May, 1921
S 98	Schichau, Elbing		28 Jul, 1900	4 Nov, 1900	Sold 26 May, 1921
S 99	Schichau, Elbing		4 Sep, 1900	13 Dec, 1900	Sold 26 May, 1921
S 100	Schichau, Elbing		13 Nov, 1900	18 Apr, 1901	Collision 15 Oct, 1915
S 101	Schichau, Elbing		22 Dec, 1900	30 May, 1901	Sold 13 May, 1921

Design & Construction

With this class, the German Navy abolished the distinction between torpedo boats and divisional boats by constructing torpedo boats of similar size of the earlier divisional boats. No more smaller torpedo boats would be built until the A boats of the First World War.^[1]

The craft were steel-hulled and galvanized below the waterline with two vertical triple-expansion engines and three Thornycroft-pattern boilers. The raised forecastle of the D 9 was increased in height, as had already been done by the U.S. Navy's Rowan.^[2] This would remain a consistent element in German T.B. designs to afford the greatest possible seaworthiness on displacements quite a bit smaller than the British employed for the same North Sea envitonment.

Performance

The raised forecastle greatly improved seakeeping, to the point where the S 90s were superior to contemporary Royal Navy destroyers. Favorable reports from British destroyermen who saw them at Kiel were one of the influences on the subsequent and highly-successful River class.^[3]^[4]

Armament

Three 50mm/40 caliber quick-firing guns
Four 450mm torpedo tubes, five torpedoes

^[5]^[6]

Footnotes

↑ "Die deutsche Marine im Jahre 1899." p. 23.
↑ Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. p. 160.
↑ March. British Destroyers. p. 72.
↑ Friedman. British Destroyers. p. 88.
↑ Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. p. 264.
↑ German Warships 1815-1945 I. p. 169.

Bibliography

Chesneau, Robert; Kolesnik, Eugene (editors) (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. London: Conway Maritime Press. (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
Gray, Randal (editor) (1985). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. London: Conway Maritime Press. (on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).
Gröner, Erich (revised and expanded by Dieter Jung and Martin Maass) (1990). German Warships 1815-1945. Volume One: Major Surface Vessels. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
"Die deutsche Marine im Jahre 1899". Uhland's Verkehrszeitung und Industrielle Rundschau. 25 January, 1900. XIV (4): p. 23.