The Viper class was a group of two Torpedo Boat Destroyers (TBD) built for the British Royal Navy in 1899. A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to launch torpedoes at larger surface ships. ... The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of the British armed services (and is therefore the Senior Service). ...

They were notable for being the first warships to use steam turbine propulsion. They had Parsons turbines on four shafts, with two propellers on each, one inboard and one outboard of the shaft A-bracket. A rotor of a modern steam turbine, used in a power plant A steam turbine is a mechanical device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam, and converts it into useful mechanical work. ... Cardan driveshaft with universal joints A driveshaft or driving shaft or Cardan shaft is a mechanical device for transferring power from the engine or motor to the point where useful work is applied. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

HMS Viper was ordered and built for the Royal Navy in 1899 by Hawthorn Leslie and Company at Hebburn on the River Tyne. HMS Python was built as a speculative venture by Hawthorns and was purchased in 1902. Hebburn is a small town situated on the south bank of the River Tyne in North East England, sandwiched between the towns of Jarrow and Gateshead. ... The River Tyne can refer to two rivers in the United Kingdom: River Tyne, England River Tyne, Scotland This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Viper and another turbine-powered ship, the Vickers special-type HMS Cobra were both lost to accidents in 1901, and since then the Royal Navy has not used snake names for destroyers; Python was renamed Velox soon after. Velox was rated as a C class type in 1913, that is a 30-knot TBD with 3 stacks. Vickers, Limited was a famous British engineering conglomerate that merged into Vickers Armstrong in 1927. ... The C class destroyers were a class of fast (30 knots) turtleback-bowed three funnelled detroyers of about 350 tons displacement built between 1894 and 1901. ...

The ships were considered successes when acquired, achieving speeds of up to 36 knots on trials, and all subsequent British destroyers after the River or E class of 1903 used steam turbine machinery (until the all-gas turbine Type 42 of 1971). These were torpedo ships built for the Royal Australian Navy. ... This machine has a single-stage radial compressor and turbine, a recuperator, and foil bearings. ... Type 42 destroyer HMS Manchester Type 42, also known as the Sheffield class, is a class of destroyers of the Royal Navy. ...