HNLMS Noordbrabant (1899)

HNLMS Noordbrabant (Hr.Ms. Noordbrabant) was a protected cruiser of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

Design
The ship was 94.7 m long, had a beam of 14.8 m, a draught of 5.41 m, and had a displacement of 4,033 ton. The ship was equipped with 2 shaft reciprocating engines, which were rated at 10,000 ihp and produced a top speed of 20 kn. The ship had a deck armour of 2 in. Two 5.9 in single turret guns provided the ship's main armament, and these were augmented by six single 4.7 in guns and four 3 in single guns. The ship had a complement of 324 men.

Service history
The ship was built at the Koninklijke Maatschappij de Schelde in Flushing and launched on 17 January 1899. The ship was commissioned on 1 March 1900. Later that year the ship visited Kiel and participates in the Kieler Woche where the German Emperor Wilhelm II made several visits to the ship.

On 6 February 1901 Noordbrabant left the port of Flushing for the Dutch East Indies. The ship arrived on 23 March that year in Tanjung Priok. Later that year on 16 April the ship made a trip to Melbourne and Albany, Australia to represent the government of the Dutch East Indies at the opening of the Australian parliament in May 1901.

On 17 June 1905 Noordbrabant and her sisters HNLMS Gelderland (1898) and HNLMS Utrecht (1898) returned to the Netherlands. The journey led by Tanjung Priok Mahé, Perim, Port Said, Algiers and Tangier to Den Helder where they arrived on 30 August that year.

The ship begins on a journey from Surabaya to San Francisco on 28 August 1909. The trip is made for the first time without using her sails. Coals where replenished at Manado, the Marshall Islands and Hawaii. 12 October that year the Noordbrabant arrived in San Francisco where the crew participated in the Portola feasts in commemoration of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

In 1910 Noordbrabant hit a cliff on 31 May while en route to Surabaya. The collision caused the flooding of several compartment of the ship. But damaged as she was she could continue on steam on her own. HNLMS Hertog Hendrik and the HNLMS Holland (1896) escorts the ship to Surabaya.

On 18 June 1914 the ship left for Durrës to retrieve the remains of Major Lodewijk Thomson and bring them back to the Netherlands. Thomson was killed during a peacekeeping mission there.

On 6 January 1916 the British submarine HMS E17 stranded on the Dutch coast but managed to pull it self loose. The commander of the submarine decided to later scuttle the boat outside territorial waters. The crew is picked up by the Noordbrabant and brought to Den Helder.

The ship was decommissioned 1920 and was rebuilt in to an accommodation ship. She was towed to Flushing in October 1926. On 17 May 1940 the ship was set on fire by its own crew to prevent it to be captured by the invading German forces. Her wreck was eventually scrapped.