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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger 

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Warship Wednesday 15 July 2026: El Abuelo

Above we see the Spanish battleship (acorazado) España underway late in her career, circa 1931, firing a salute. Commissioned under a different name, she was the site of a naval mutiny and dockyard siege some 90 years ago this week that would lead to her eventual demise and throw her country into a very dark half-century.

Spanish 20th Century Battleship Needs

The Real Armada had its heart torn out during the war (el Desastre) with America in 1898, with 11 of its fairly modern cruisers (eight protected and three armored) sunk, captured, or otherwise lost in combat operations between Manila and Santiago. The fact was that Madrid had deployed the bulk of its first-class warships overseas to protect its colonies, and both the territories and the vessels were lost.

By 1900, the main line of the Spanish Navy consisted of just five steel-hulled vessels they rated as “battleships.” Of those five, the largest and most formidable was the circa 1887 French-built Pelayo (9,900 tons/330 feet oal, 2×12.6″, 2×11″, 16 knots), which was the only vessel in the Spanish fleet with 12-inch guns, albeit stubby low-angle 12″/35 M1880 Canet models.

The newest of the five were the sisters Cardennal Cisneros, Cataluña, and Princesa de Asturias, which had been built slowly in Spain (too slow to take part in the war of 1898) and, while some 7,000 tons and capable of 20 knots on a 14,800 hp plant, their two-gun 9.4-inch main battery and 5.5-inch secondary made them more underpowered armored cruisers than battleships.

The same can be said of the one-off 9,000-ton Emperador Carlos V, which, while she could make 19 knots and carried a pair of 11-inch guns balanced by eight 5.5-inchers, only had a two-inch armor belt, which again left her as more an armored cruiser, and a slow one at that.

The state of the once proud fleet had become something of a joke by 1904.

Fleet Admiral José Ferrándiz y Niño, in a popular cartoon by Joaquín Moya from 1904 in the Spanish satirical magazine Gedeón depicting Spanish Council of Ministers President Antonio Maura’s reaction to the “formidable squadron” at Viggo, only to be told by Ferrándiz that it was a Russian one (the Baltic Fleet’s 2nd Pacific Squadron under Rozhestvensky headed to Tsushima):

By 1906, with HMS Dreadnought changing the battleship game forever, Spain knew it needed something more, both to display enough muscle to keep its African colonies (Guinea, Rio de Oro, Spanish Morocco, etc.), and contribute something to the growing web of European military alliances. Speaking to the latter, the Pact of Cartagena in May 1907, co-signed with Britain and France, set the stage for Madrid to join its newfound partners in a future theoretical conflict with Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary.

And that meant at least a few new battleships.

Which brings us to…

The World’s Tiniest Dreadnoughts

ADM Ferrándiz’s Naval Plan of 1907 sought to build a thoroughly modern fleet that the country could afford, centered on a squadron of new battleships, supported by three new destroyers, 22 torpedo boats, four gunboats, and several auxiliary vessels

It was decided early on that the three new battleships would be constructed domestically by the newly-formed Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval (SECN) in Ferrol, which was in turn majority-owned by the British shipbuilding firms of Vickers, Armstrong Whitworth, and John Brown & Company, with a Garantia Tecnica Comite made up of British executives drawn from said companies.

This led to a very, well, English design, only abbreviated for cost.

The overall length was but 459 feet with a 78-foot beam and 26-foot draft. Normal standard displacement was 15,452 tons (16,400 full). While the smallest on record for completed dreadnoughts, not counting such creatures as the WWII-era German “pocket battleships,” they still weren’t as small as one would think.

Their dimensions put the new Spanish ships only about 70 feet shorter and 3,000 tons lighter than HMS Dreadnought herself (18,410 tons std, 527 feet oal), while the American South Carolina-class battleships were on a slightly shorter hull than the Spanish (452 feet oal), just with heavier armor and guns putting them in the 17,900 ton class when fully loaded.

The Spanish ships also compared decently to the period German Nassau-class dreadnoughts (18.700 tons, 479 feet oal) and the Austrian Tegetthoff-class (20,000 tons, 498 feet oal). All ships mentioned in this paragraph carried 11- or 12-inch main guns.

Speaking of guns, the Spanish dreadnoughts would carry a series of unique 30.5 cm/50 (12″) Vickers (VSM) Mark H guns in four twin turrets, arranged en echelon.

While decent in performance (they could fire an 850-pound AP shell to 20,000 yards with a rate of fire of 1.5 rounds per minute, per gun), the arrangement allowed six guns firing forward and over the stern (in certain narrow angles) but effectively also limited the broadside to six guns due to likely damage from cross-decked turrets. Magazines were shallow, and while most battleships of the era packed at least 100 shells per gun in the main battery, the Spanish ships could carry only 80.

Their secondary armament consisted of 20 4″/50 Vickers E series guns with a firing angle of 120 degrees, carried ten per broadside. However, they were protected in casemate positions that were too close to the waterline to be useful in even a moderate sea state.

Defense against torpedoes and torpedo boats came from Bullivant series metal nets carried on 20 40-foot outrigger booms. Boats coming close enough would have to face four Vickers 47mm 3-pounder QF mounts, while two 7mm Maxim machine guns were mounted on the bridge wings. For a landing party, she could send a company-sized force of light infantry ashore armed with rifles, pistols, and two light guns.

Their Vickers and Armstrong-supplied Krupp Cemented steel armor plan ranged from an 8-inch belt amidships (thinning to just 3 inches at the bow) with 8 inches over the gun houses (6 inches at the barbettes), 6 inches over the casemates, and a 10-inch conning tower.

It doesn’t take a naval scholar to see this is more akin to what you would see on a big cruiser than a dreadnought, and was closer to that seen on the lightly armored British Invincible-class battlecruisers, which carried a 6-inch belt, 7 over the turrets, and 10 in the conning tower. However, while Invincible at least had 2.5-inch torpedo bulkheads under the waterline, the Spanish vessels had no such underwater protection, making do with just 1.5 inches of HT screens over 12 of her 16 sections.

When it comes to manning, during peacetime, the ships could make do with a 650-700 man crew, growing to 854 on mobilization. This is a bit larger than on HMS Dreadnought (810 wartime) and on par with USS South Carolina (869), with the Spanish ships universally noted as being cramped, especially so in the enlisted berthing as space had been carved out for carried sumptuous (often unoccupied) suites for admirals.

The engineering plant consisted of a dozen coal-fired Yarrow pattern boilers built domestically under license by Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima (MTM) in Barcelona, which had made the boilers and machinery for the cruiser Extremadura in 1902 as well as for the cruiser Lepanto before that and the engines for the Infanta María Teresa class armored cruisers in the 1890s. Each ship would use four Parsons turbines built at Ferrol by SECN to generate 15,500shp for 19.5 knots. Using forced draft and oil-sprayed coal to reach full power of 21,582 shp, ships on trials bested 20 knots.

The construction of Parsons turbines for the Espana-class battleships by SECN at Ferrol under the supervision of Parsons’ Mr. Dixon. The turbine house went on to craft engines for Hamburg-America liners post-war and today is still around as Navantia Seanergies’ Fábrica de Turbinas facility, still located in Ferrol:

They were modern ships, with hydraulically operated main turrets whose guns could be loaded at any angle, electric lifts and lights, forced ventilation, and six independent electric bilge pump systems. Six large 30-inch searchlights dotted the superstructure and her two masts. A Telefunken TSH wireless station, only first installed in Spanish service on the battleship Pelayo in 1904, was standard on each ship.

At the end of the day, three Spanish dreadnoughts were ordered and built: Espana, Alfonso XIII (also seen as Alfonso Trece), and Jaime I, with the first two built nearly side-by-side.

Construction was all done at Ferrol, with Espana laid down in December 1909 and the last hull, Jaime I, delayed by the Great War, completed only in December 1921.

Cost per hull, with machinery and armament, was 43 million Spanish pesetas, leaving the program total at about 150 million pesetas. Adjusted for inflation in 2026 USD is $281 million per ship and about $1B for the program as a whole.

They would be the largest warships built in Spain until the only slightly bigger 16,700-ton light carrier SPS Príncipe de Asturias (R-11) was delivered by Bazan, Ferrol, in 1988.

But that’s not all. The Spanish admiralty planned a follow-on class of three 21,000-ton Reina Victoria Eugenia-class ships, carrying 13.5-inch guns and capable of 21-knots, laid out as sort of a more compact HMS Queen Elizabeth-class battleship.

The official plan, set to come to fruition around 1918-20, would be that the six completed dreadnoughts would be joined by the three existing 7,000-ton Princesa de Asturias-class armored cruisers, three new 5,000-ton/25-knot protected cruisers based on HMS Birmingham, and up to a dozen new Bustamante-class destroyers under a grand strike force dubbed 1.er Escuadrón.

Well, anyway…

Meet Alfonso XIII

Our subject was the second Spanish warship named in honor of King Alfonso XIII de España, “el Africano,” who had been born to the country’s queen regent in May 1886, six months after his father, Alfonso XII, passed away. This made him the infant king at birth, and he held the throne for 44 years until April 1931.

The previous warship to carry his name was a Reina Regente-class protected cruiser built at Ferrol for a cost of 9 million pesetas and, overloaded and with cranky engines, was immediately relegated to training when completed in 1896, then was decommissioned four years later and scrapped in 1907. The class leader sank during a storm at sea in 1895, taking all 420 men to the bottom, while the third member of the class, Lepanto, was removed and scrapped just 12 years after she was completed, closing the book on the experimental and ineffectual class.

Announced on 17 November 1909 with the other two members of her class, the keel of the future battleship Alfonso XIII was laid at the SECN shipyard in Ferrol on 23 February 1910.

Great War service

In August 1914, Spain had the Espana fully complete and only completed gunnery trials two months prior, the old Pelayo, the four previously mentioned Princesa de Asturias and Emperador Carlos V-class armored cruisers, the protected cruiser Reina Regente (5781 t, 10×6″ guns, 19 knots), the small cruiser Río de La Plata (1875 t, 2×5.9″, 4×4″, 2xtt, 20 kts), the scout cruiser Extremadura which was deployed as a station ship to Mexico, and about 30 destroyers, gunboats, and minelayers. None of the new planned light cruisers and only one of the new Bustamante-class destroyers had been completed. Reina Victoria Eugenia, the planned 21,000-ton battlewagon, was soon canceled along with her two never-named sisters.

All in all, not a commanding fleet to take on any other European power, and certainly not the planned 1.er Escuadrón.

As Spain’s entry to the war on the side of France and Britain centered on Italy entering on the side of Germany and Austria, once Italy declared neutrality on 3 August 1914, the conservative Spanish government of Eduardo Dato announced on 7 August it was sitting out the war as well, at least for now. Plus, some 80 percent of the 220,000-strong Spanish Army (13 of 16 divisions) had been deployed to Morocco since 1911 to fight the rebellious Rif.

Launched on 7 May 1913, while fitting out, Alfonso XIII’s completion was delayed by the outbreak of the Great War, as much of her equipment, including her fire-control systems, was on hold in Britain pending developments. She was only commissioned into service, joining España in the 1.er Escuadrón, in August 1915, using an improvised fire-control system secured via Sweden, another neutral.

España and Alfonso XIII’s Great War consisted primarily of training exercises, frequently conducted off Galicia, and a naval review off Santander during the namesake king’s usual summer holidays there. Alfonso even stood by in home waters while España sailed across the Atlantic to Panama along with a Portuguese cruiser to mark the opening ceremonies of the Panama Canal.

A little excitement came whenever German, French, or British ships skirted the Spanish coast, and U-boats occasionally appeared on official business or, damaged, sought internment.

The Spanish fleet was responsible for the continued watch on 70 German and 25 Austrian merchant vessels that spent the war immobilized in the country’s harbors.

Further, Alfonso assisted the tug Antelo after the latter ran aground off Cape Prior in April 1917 and searched for the missing destroyer Terror (one of the fleet’s few survivors of the 1898 war) when the latter went missing in a storm.

She was also called upon to send a landing force ashore at Bilbao in August 1917 to put down a rebellion by armed miners and railway workers that required a “whiff of gunpowder” to put down, resulting in the death of one of the battleship’s sailors and the arrest of 22 Reds who were dutifully hauled back to the ship for detention.

The follow-on Figueroa, Prieto, and Maura governments would keep up the wobbly neutrality through the end of the brutal conflict. That didn’t stop Spanish factories from making arms for the allies and shipping them millions of tons of raw materials (for the first time in its modern history, Spain did not have a trade deficit), 2,000 Spanish/Catalan volunteers crossing the Pyrenees to join the French Foreign Legion, or German U-boats from sinking 80 Spanish merchantmen during the war– a full quarter of the country’s merchant marine.

Likewise, the country became a hot-bed for spies from both sides, and the Spanish African colony of Guinea had to accommodate 47,000 German refugee colonists and soldiers from nearby Kamerun after it was captured by the British and French in February 1916.

The Spanish king founded the humanitarian Oficina Pro Cautivos, or Pro Captives Office, which oversaw the exchange in Spanish ports of 21,000 sick POWs from both sides under the aegis of the Red Cross while handling 250,000 requests for information about (mostly French and Belgian) missing persons or prisoners, and Spanish military attachés abroad conducted more than 4,000 visits to POW camps across Europe for inspections.

The country eventually took a bit of reparations in the form of 12 German merchant ships totaling 35,704 GRT seized in Spanish ports in October 1918 or handed over after the war for compensation for the U-Boat sinkings. These included the fine 9,000-ton Hansa steamer Neuenfels, which became the Spanish Navy’s seaplane tender (portahidroaviones) Dédalo, but that is another story.

Peacetime Cruising

Following the end of hostilities, the Spanish were finally able to complete the third España-class battlewagon, and Alfonso XIII received her originally intended fire control equipment. Further, all three were modernized by removing the four 1900s vintage 47mm Hotchkiss guns in favor of a pair of new 3″/34 Vickers FF model AAA mounts.

Alfonso was busy.

She landed troops to guard Barcelona’s railway system for 44 days during riots in early 1919.

In June 1920, Alfonso set out on an American goodwill tour with naval cadets aboard, stopping at the Canary Islands on the 22nd, becoming the first Spanish warship to visit Cuba since 1898 (calling at Havana on July 9) and Puerto Rico.

Calling at Annapolis, the academy’s training hulk, the former Spanish cruiser USS Reina Mercedes, captured in 1898, raised the old flag in honor.

She then called at New York City, the first Spanish warship to do so since Vizcaya in early 1898. There, she picked up parts and material for the Spanish submarine Isaac Peral (A 01), which had been built at Fore River in 1916, as well as the Spanish B-class submarines which were being built back home in Cartagena based on designs from Electric Boat, then called on Norfolk for another goodwill visit before heading back home in October.

In 1921, she started off the year by visiting Portugal in April, then by July was off the coast of Spanish Morocco to bombard the Rif, who were busy winning their war. Alfonso would spend the next four years deployed off and on to the colony, exchanging artillery duels with Rif field guns, landing troops and marines for campaigns ashore, and delivering naval gunfire support.

It was during the conflict that class leader España ran aground off Cape Tres Forcas in August 1923 while providing NGFS ashore and was lost.

The campaign culminated with the Alhucemas landings in September 1925, which saw 13,000 Spanish and French troops kick in the door to take the Rif stronghold head-on.

Supported by 164 aircraft, a dirigible, and 17 tanks, the battleline for the landings included the two remaining España-class sisters (Alfonso and Jaime) as well as the French Courbet-class battleship Paris. Six cruisers: the Spanish Méndez Núñez, Blas de Lezo, Victoria Eugenia, and Extremadura; and the French Metz and Strasbourg, also took part in the effort along with the seaplane carrier Dedalo and nearly 100 assorted destroyers, monitors, gunboats, and transports.

It was the largest amphibious operation since Gallipoli, and proved far more successful, keeping the tactic alive in the mind of strategists for another generation.

Besides her experience fighting the Rif, Alfonso carried out several additional goodwill cruises, including one to Italy in 1923, carried her namesake and his wife on a cruise of the Galician coast in the summer of 1927, and led the international naval parade for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition.

Nothing Civil About War

The national economic crisis that hit Spain as part of the Great Depression in 1931 led the King to abdicate his throne in April and head to Rome in exile, leaving the new socialist government to order the battleship named after him to be renamed to España, recycling the name left vacant after her sister sank in 1923.

As part of austerity measures, both España (ex-Alfonso) and Jaime I were placed in reserve at Ferrol on 15 June 1931.

While a series of proposed modernizations for the obsolete battlewagons were mulled over the next four years, the government’s grip on the country grew tenuous. Jaimie was reactivated in 1934 to help put down the anarchist Asturian Revolution, firing her guns into the Cimadevilla neighborhood of Gijón and bringing reliable Spanish Legion and the Regulares colonial troops up from Morocco to fight the 30,000-strong Red Army.

When the coup that kicked off what is now known as the Spanish Civil War kicked off in July 1936, Jaime was in Santander, with her cannons pointed at the military barracks which had been ready to go over to the rebels of Franco’s right-aligned Nationalists.

Meanwhile, still in dry dock in Ferrol, the skeleton crew of España (ex-Alfonso) joined with that of the cruiser Almirante Cervera to resist the pro-Franco coup which carried the Naval Arsenal there on 20 July 1936.

After a two-day siege of the dry yard and dry dock by the Nationalist forces and out of bullets for their rifles (they had no shells for the ship’s guns), the loyalist crew of España laid down their arms. In the immediate aftermath, 72 sailors from the battleship were put on trial by the new government, with 28 duly shot by firing squad and 34 hauled off to the brig.

With the whole yard ordered to bring España (ex-Alfonso) into fighting trim, she was placed back into commission on 12 August 1936, although only half of her 12-inch Vickers H guns (turrets Nos 1 and 4) were operable, along with 12 of 20 4″/50 casemate guns, plus she had a much-reduced and very green crew.

By this stage of the Civil War, the Republican (loyalist government) side had the battleship Jaime Primereo, the light cruisers Libertad (Galicia), Miguel de Cervantes, Mendez Nunez, 12 destroyers, six torpedo boats, five subs and several smaller craft.

Casting their lot with the Nationalist (insurgent) forces under Franco besides España (ex-Alfonso) were the heavy cruisers Canarias, Baleares, and Almirante Cervera, and the old light cruiser Navarra (ex- Republica, ex-Reina Victoria Eugenia), the destroyer Velasco, TRs 2, 7, 9, 16, and 19, the submarines C3, C 5, C 6, and B 5, all six of the country’s minelayers, the gunboats Canoaros del Castillo and Dato, along with a myriad of smaller craft.

Escorted by the destroyer Velasco, España (ex-Alfonso), dubbed Abuelo (grandfather) by the forces she supported, carried out blockade missions on the Republican-held coastline for the next six weeks until the end of September. These included bombarding vital fuel depots at Santurce, hitting troop concentrations at Gipuzkoa, San Sebastián, Irún, and Fuenterrabía, helping break the siege of Simancas, and in the capture of several ships transporting supplies to the Republicans.

Improvements to España (ex-Alfonso) and subsequent yard periods saw the battleship by October 1936 return a third turret (No 3) to operation, her fourth turret used as a source of spare parts for the other three. She saw eight of her 4-inch casemate guns removed for service ashore. To counter possible Nationalist air attacks, she was fitted with four German 88mm SK L/45 C/13s and two 20mm C/30 flak cannons.

Returning to service, she shrugged off a series of torpedo and air attacks over the next six months but, while chasing the British steamer Knitsley, struck a mine near Santander on 30 April 1937, likely laid by the Nationalists as they controlled the country’s entire minelayer fleet. Suffering from a combination of poor underwater protection and an inexperienced crew, she was lost, sinking slowly over the course of three hours. Her escorting destroyer Velasco managed to save all but five of her crew.

It was claimed at the time that she was sunk by air attack.

Her final sister, the Republican-controlled Jaime, ran aground at Punta Sabinar on 15 April, managed to refloat herself, and took refuge first in Almería, where she was hit first by a wave of Italian S-79 bombers then by German Condor Legion Heinkel He 59s of Aufklärungsstaffel See/88. Limping to Cartagena for repairs, a magazine explosion there (oft attributed to sabotage) sent the aging and weary battleship to the seabed, causing some 300 deaths in the process.

Jaime’s 12-inch guns were salvaged and placed in the Strait of Gibraltar in coastal batteries D9 and D10 at El Vigía and Casquebel near Tarifa, while her smaller 4-inchers were placed in single mounts in the coastal batteries at Rafalbetx and Cabo Blanco in Mallorca, kept in service through the 1980s.

Likewise, the original España’s 12-inch and 4-inch guns, salvaged in 1924 from her wreck, were emplaced in numerous coastal defense batteries, the last of which, the La Marquina Battery in Cádiz, was still in operation until 1999.

Epilogue

Our subject’s wreck was discovered and charted by the Spanish Navy in 2016 by the salvage ship Neptuno.

She rests largely intact at a depth of 242 feet, making her a deep but not impossible dive.

She is also remembered in maritime art.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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