HMS Spiteful was a Spiteful-class torpedo boat destroyer built at Jarrow, England, by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company for the Royal Navy and launched in 1899. Specified to be able to steam at 30 knots, she spent her entire career serving in the seas around the British Isles.
HMS Spiteful
A contemporary artist's impression of the collision between Spiteful and the barge Preciosa on 4 April 1905: two of Preciosa's crew died.
A model of HMS Spiteful, built in about 1904: whereas the model has three funnels, the ship had four, with the central two grouped as a pair.
The Reed water tube boiler was a type of water tube boiler developed by J. W. Reed, manager of the engine works at Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company of Jarrow, England, where it was manufactured from 1893 to 1905. At this time, Palmers was a vertically integrated business: in its shipyard at Jarrow, using iron ore from its own mine in North Yorkshire, it produced the iron and steel needed for its ships, and engines and boilers of its own design.
Longitudinal and cross sections of a Reed water tube boiler as installed in torpedo boat destroyer HMS Lightning of 1895: the black lines adjacent to and above the steam-generating tubes in the cross section are baffles designed to optimise the passage of hot gases around the tubes. Both diagrams illustrate the designed water level in the top chamber, below which the steam-generating tubes were connected.
A cross section and plan of the connection between water tubes and a water chamber in a Reed boiler. The spheroidal ferrules "3" are screwed onto the tubes, which are then inserted into holes in the water chamber wall that are of slightly larger diameter than the tubes; the tubes are then secured by nuts "N" on the inside of the chamber.
Most major boiler components in this view of the boiler shop at Palmers in about 1900 are for Reed water tube boilers.