HNLMS Utrecht (1898)

HNLMS Utrecht (Hr.Ms. Utrecht) 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 3,970 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 Rijkswerf in Amsterdam and launched on 14 July 1898. The ship was commissioned on 1 March 1901. On 6 May that year the Utrecht made a trip with adelborsten to the Mediterranean Sea. The ports of Cádiz, La Spezia, Naples and Toulon are visited. On 22 July that year the ship arrived in the port of Flushing concluding the trip.

In 1902 Utrecht was sent to Venezuela together with HNLMS Koningin Regentes and on 2 April 1902 they arrived in the Venezuelan port of La Guaira. Prior to their arrival, the Venezuelan Navy had repeatedly checked Dutch and Antillean merchant ships and the presence of the Dutch warships acted as a detterent against further actions.

On 6 Jule 1904 Utrecht and HNLMS Gelderland (1898) both ran aground near Aroes Lampoejang, South Sumatra because of incomplete maps. The ships where repaired in respectively Surabaya and Singapore. Later that year on 18 September Utrecht assisted the Van Outshoorn of the Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij that had hit a cliff.

On 17 June 1905 Utrecht and her sisters HNLMS Noord-Brabant (1899) and Gelderland 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.

On 1 September 1909 Utrecht left Suriname for a visit to New York City. The ship was there to participate in the Hudson-Fulton feasts, held in honor of the arrival of Henry Hudson in America on the ship de Halve Maen of the Dutch East India Company and the launch of a by Robert Fulton designed steamship in 1809. The ship participates in a fleet review on the Hudson River. During this review the crew of the Utrecht dressed in seventeenth century costumes sailed on a replica of Hudsons ship the Halve Maen that was built by the Rijkswerf in Amsterdam. The replica was later offered to the chairman of the comity of the feasts. However the replica was destroyed in a fire shortly after.

25 April 1910 the ship left Paramaribo for a trip to Buenos Aires for the celebration of 100 years independence of Argentina. On 21 may that year she participates in a fleet review held there. 2 July the ships started on the journey back that led by Brazil and Grenada. On 26 August the ship was back in Suriname.

The ships was finally decommissioned in 1913.