HMS Hawke, launched in 1891, was the seventh British warship to be named Hawke. She was an protected cruiser. In September 1911 the Hawke collided with the ocean liner RMS Olympic. The damage smashed the Hawkes bow and damaged the stern of the Olympic. Construction Hawke was laid down at Chatham Dockyard on 17 June 1889, one of nine Edgar-class cruisers ordered for the Royal Navy under the Naval Defence Act 1889, and launched on 11 March 1891. Sea trials in March 1892 were satisfactory, with her engines reaching the required power, and the ship was completed on 16 May 1893. Hawke was long overall and between perpendiculars, with a beam of and a draught of . She displaced . Armament consisted of two 9.2 inch guns, on the ships centreline, backed up by ten six-inch guns, of which four were in casemates on the main deck and the remainder behind open shields. Twelve 6-pounder and four 3-pounder guns provided anti-torpedo-boat defences, while four 18 inch torpedo tubes were fitted. The Edgars were protected cruisers, with an arched, armoured deck thick at about waterline level. The casemate armour was thick, with thick shields for the 9.2 inch guns and armour on the ship's conning tower. Hawke machinery was built by Fairfields, with four double-ended cylindrical boilers feeding steam at to 2 three-cylinder triple expansion engines, which drove two shafts. This gave under forced draught, giving a speed of . Service On commissioning, Hawke joined the Mediterranean Fleet, remaining on that station for most of the rest of the decade. In early 1897, Hawke deployed to Crete to serve in the International Squadron, a multinational force made up of ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, French Navy, Imperial German Navy, Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina), Imperial Russian Navy, and Royal Navy that intervened in the 1897-1898 Greek uprising on Crete against rule by the Ottoman Empire. The uprising prompted Greece to land a Greek Army expeditionary force of 1,500 men on Crete to support the Cretan insurgency, which in turn precipitated the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, also known as the Thirty Days War, in April 1897. The war ended in a quick and disastrous Greek defeat, and the ceasefire agreement required the Greek Army to withdraw from Crete. Accordingly, the Greek expeditionary force embarked aboard Hawke on 23 May 1897 for transportation to Greece. The uprising on Crete continued,