NMS Elisabeta

NMS Elisabeta was a small protected cruiser built by Armstrong for Romania in the 1880s. Serving mainly as a training ship, she represented Romania at the opening of the Kiel Canal in 1895. She helped protect Romanian interests in Constantinople during the First Balkan War in 1912–13, but played no significant part in the Second Balkan War and was disarmed and hulked at the beginning of World War I. Employed as a barracks ship after the war, she was scrapped in 1926.

Description
Elisabeta was built of steel and measured 239 ft long overall. She had a beam of 33 ft and a draft at the bow of 11 ft that increased to 12 ft at the stern. She displaced 1330 LT at full load.

Elisabeta had two triple expansion steam engines driving 9 ft screw propellers. Four cylindrical boilers provided steam to the engines. The engines had a normal designed output of 2500 ihp or 4700 ihp using forced draft. During her trials on 14 September 1888, Elisabeta had a top speed of 19.049 knots, but she averaged 18.053 knots. She carried 322 LT of coal.

Elisabta's main armament consisted of four single 15 cm/35-caliber Krupp breech-loading guns on pivot mounts in semi-circular sponsons on the side of the ship. She carried four single 57 mm Nordenfelt guns, two each in the bow and stern. She also carried four 37 mm Hotchkiss guns. Four 356 mm above-water torpedo tubes were also fitted, one each in the bow and stern and one on each broadside.

Her protective deck was 1.7 in thick on the flat and increased to 3.4 in on the slopes. It tapered to 1 in at the ends of the ship.

Service
Elisabeta sailed for Romania at the end of October 1888, arriving there about three weeks later, and received her armament at the Galaţi Naval Arsenal. She made several summer training voyages around the Black Sea in 1889 and 1890. At the beginning of 1891 she began a five-month cruise in the Mediterranean. She represented Romania at the 1892 Columbus celebrations of Livorno, Barcelona and Lisbon. In 1894 she made a short cruise in the Black Sea followed by a longer Mediterranean cruise. Elisabeta sailed for Kiel in 1895 to participate in the opening celebration of the Kiel Canal and continued on to Stockholm where she was inspected by the King of Sweden. She made the first Romanian survey of their coast in 1898 and underwent a major refit at Galaţi in 1904–05 where her sailing rig was reduced to two pole masts.

Elisabeta's armament was exchanged for four French Saint-Chamond 120 mm and 75 mm guns in 1907. She was in Constantinople during the First Balkan War where she landed several shore parties to protect the Romanian Legation. After the end of the war she returned to Romania on 15 June 1913, only a day before Bulgaria began the Second Balkan War. She remained at Sulina to defend the mouths of the Danube during the war. Disarmed when World War I began, her armament was emplaced on the Danube River to protect against possible attacks by Austro-Hungarian river monitors, and she remained in Sulina for the duration of the war. After the war she was used as a barracks ship at Galaţi and later at Sulina before she was sold for scrap in 1926.