Name HMS Panther Completed January 1898 Displacement 395 long tons (401 t) Launched 21 January 1897 Draft 2.97 m | Laid down 19 May 1896 Fate Scrapped, 1920 Construction started 19 May 1896 Length 64 m Builder Cammell Laird | |
Class and type Earnest-class destroyer | ||
HMS Panther was a B-class torpedo boat destroyer of the British Royal Navy. She was completed by Laird, Son & Company, Birkenhead, in 1897.
Service history
On 20 April 1901 she was commissioned at Devonport by Lieutenant and Commander A. K. Macrorie to take the place of HMS Osprey in the dockyard´s instructional flotilla. In early December 1901 Commander Cecil Lambert was appointed in command, and on 5 December 1901 she was recommissioned as tender to the battleship Illustrious on the Mediterranean station. Lambert was moved to another ship the following month, however, and when she left Devonport for Malta in January 1902, Lieutenant and Commander Lancelot Napier Turton was in command.
In July 1914, shortly before the Irish Volunteers carried out the Howth gun-running, the Panther was sent to Dublin Bay to guard against such a measure. Bulmer Hobson told a colleague "in strict confidence" that an arms landing was planned for Waterford, in the south of the country, hoping that the news would leak to the authorities. The Panther duly sailed south, and the way was left clear for the operation at Howth to proceed.
She was sold in 1920.