HMS Repulse was one of seven Royal Sovereign-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the 1890s. Assigned to the Channel Fleet, where she often served as a flagship, after commissioning in 1894, the ship participated in a series of annual manoeuvres, and the Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Fleet Review during the rest of the decade. Repulse was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1902 and remained there until December 1903, when she returned home for an extensive refit. After its completion in 1905, Repulse was assigned to the Reserve Fleet until she was sold for scrap in 1911. Design and description The design of the Royal Sovereign-class ships was derived from that of the battleships, greatly enlarged to improve seakeeping and to provide space for a secondary armament as in the preceding battleships. The ships displaced at normal load and at deep load. They had a length between perpendiculars of and were long overall, a beam of , and a draught of . As a flagship, Repulses crew consisted of 670 officers and ratings in 1903. Repulse was powered by a pair of three-cylinder, vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft. Her Humphrys & Tennant engines were designed to produce a total of and a maximum speed of using steam provided by eight cylindrical boilers with forced draught. The ship reached a speed of during her sea trials. The Royal Sovereign-class ships carried a maximum of of coal which gave them a range of at a speed of . Their main armament consisted of four breech-loading (BL) guns mounted in two twin-barbette mountings, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. Each gun was provided with 80 rounds. Their secondary armament consisted of ten quick-firing (QF) guns. 200 rounds per gun were carried by the ships. Sixteen QF 6-pounder () guns of an unknown type and a dozen QF 3-pounder () Hotchkiss guns were fitted for defence against torpedo boats. The two 3-pounders in the upper fighting top were removed by 1902 and all of the remaining light guns from the lower fighting tops and main deck followed in 1905–09. Repulse carried seven 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tubes, although four were removed in 1902. The Royal Sovereigns' armour scheme was similar to that of the Trafalgars, as the waterline belt of compound armour only protected the area between the barbettes. The belt and transverse bulkheads thick closed