The Apollo Class

The Apollo class ships were an offshoot of the development of the Battle-Cruiser, the armored and protected cruisers, and descended directly from the ‘belted’ cruisers. The term ‘cruiser’, originally spelt ‘cruizer’ was at first any ship, often a frigate, detached from a fleet for independent reconnaissance. The important similarity of such ships was that they be fast. With the advent of steam propulsion and armor plating in the 19th century, cruisers became a generic type of warship in their own right[1].

‘Armored’ or ‘heavily protected cruisers’, such as Niobe, were larger ships, and had large amounts of armor which contributed to their weight of 11,000+ tons. Rainbow on the other hand, was one of two branches of the cruiser tree. All had the armored ‘Citadel’, but in the case of the Rainbow, the guns on deck were completely without protection or at best fitted with light shields[2]. Apart from that, the ship was fitted with a light ‘belt’ of armor and only her magazines were armored. These ‘belted’ cruisers, in order to achieve higher speeds, were gradually developed into the ‘small’ cruiser and finally the ‘light’ cruiser. ‘Armored’ cruisers, even more substantial than Niobe, were fitted with gun casements or turrets which were heavily armored.

Built by Palmers at Hebburn-On-Tyne in England, Rainbow was launched on the 25th of March 1891.[3] Weighing in at 3,600 tons, she was 314′ long, had a beam of 43.5′ and a draught of 17.5′. She mounted 2-6″ guns, 2-4.7″ guns, 8-6 pounders and either 2 or 4-14″ torpedo tubes (depending on the information source). She had a design speed of 19.75 knots and her engines, when new, put out about 9,000 hp. She had a crew complement of around 273 to 300 men[4][5].

At the beginning of WWI, Rainbow was the only Allied warship to protect the western coast of North America. During the war she patrolled the entire coast, sometimes as far as Panama, in search of German warships, as well as scouted the BC coastal waters to ensure that no German auxiliaries such as colliers were hiding or spying on ship movements. She also ended up transporting some $140,000,000 in Russian gold bullion between Japanese ships in Esquimalt and Barkley Sound and Vancouver[6].

By early 1917, the Canadian Navy was having difficulties managing the East coast patrols. Since Rainbow was in need of extensive repair and refit, she was to be paid off and her crew transferred to the patrols. By this time both the Japanese and the US had taken over naval patrol of the Pacific. She performed her last duties of war service by training gunners for patrol vessels, and was paid off on May 8th, 1917. She reverted to disposal on June 30th 1917, but was re-commissioned as a depot ship on July 5th. Paid off again on June 1st, 1920, she was sold to a Seattle ship-breaker, ostensibly for use as a freighter.