Alfonso XIII was the second of three dreadnought battleships built in the 1910s for the Spanish Navy. Named after King Alfonso XIII of Spain, the ship was not completed until 1915 owing to a shortage of materials that resulted from the start of World War I the previous year. The España class was ordered as part of a naval construction program to rebuild the fleet after the losses of the Spanish–American War; the program began in the context of closer Spanish relations with Britain and France. The ships were armed with a main battery of eight guns and were intended to support the French Navy in the event of a major European war.
Despite the reason for the ships' construction, Spain remained neutral during World War I. Alfonso XIIIs early career passed largely uneventfully with routine training exercises in Spanish waters, though she was used to assist civilian vessels in distress and her crew was deployed to suppress civil unrest in Spain. In the 1920s, she took part in the Rif War in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco, where her sister was wrecked. In 1931, Alfonso XIII abdicated and the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed; the new republic sought to erase remnants of the royal order, and so Alfonso XIII was renamed España. As part of cost-cutting measures, the ship was then reduced to reserve. Plans to modernize España and her sister in the mid-1930s came to nothing when the Spanish coup of July 1936 initiated the Spanish Civil War.
At the start of the conflict, the crew murdered the ship's officers and attempted to resist the Nationalist rebels in Ferrol, but after the Nationalists seized coastal artillery batteries, they surrendered. España then became the core of the Nationalist fleet and she was used to enforce a blockade of the north coast of Spain, frequently patrolling and stopping freighters that attempted to enter the Republican-controlled ports of Gijón, Santander, and Bilbao. During these operations on 30 April 1937, she was fatally damaged when she accidentally struck a mine that had been laid by a Nationalist minelayer. Most of her crew was evacuated by the destroyer before España capsized and sank; only four were killed in the sinking. The wreck was discovered and examined in 1984.
Design
Following the destruction of much of the Spanish fleet in the Spanish–American War of 1898, the Spanish Navy began a series of failed attempts to begin the process of rebuilding. After the First Moroccan Crisis strengthened Spain's ties to Britain and France and public support for rearmament increased in its aftermath, the Spanish government came to an agreement with those countries for a plan of mutual defense. In exchange for British and French support for Spain's defense, the Spanish fleet would support the French Navy in the event of war with the Triple Alliance. A strengthened Spanish fleet was thus in the interests of Britain and France, which accordingly provided technical assistance in the development of modern warships, the contracts for which were awarded to the Spanish firm (SECN), which was formed by the British shipbuilders Vickers, Armstrong Whitworth, and John Brown & Company. The vessels were authorized some six months after the British had completed the "all-big-gun" , and after discarding plans to build pre-dreadnought-type battleships, the naval command quickly decided to build their own dreadnoughts.
Alfonso XIII was long at the waterline and long overall. She had a beam of and a draft of ; her freeboard was amidships. The ship displaced as designed and up to at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of four-shaft Parsons steam turbines driving four screw propellers, with steam provided by twelve Yarrow boilers. The engines were rated at and produced a top speed of . Alfonso XIII had a cruising radius of at a speed of . Her crew consisted of 854 officers and enlisted men.
Alfonso XIII was armed with a main battery of eight 50-caliber guns, mounted in four twin gun turrets. One turret was placed forward, two were positioned en echelon amidships, and the fourth was aft of the superstructure. This mounting scheme was chosen in preference to superfiring turrets, as was done in the American s, to save weight and cost. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried a secondary battery that consisted of twenty guns mounted individually in casemates along the length of the hull. They were too close to the waterline, however, making them unusable in heavy seas. She was also armed with four 3-pounder guns and two machine guns. Her armored belt was thick amidships; the main battery turrets were protected with the same amount of armor plate. The conning tower had thick sides. Her armored deck was thick.