the enemy. The task of escorting merchant convoys was still in the future.

An important development came in 1884 with HMS Swift, a large torpedo boat with six 47 mm quick-firing guns and three torpedo tubes. While still not fast enough to engage torpedo boats reliably, she at least had the armament to deal with them.

The Japanese Kotaka (Falcon) of 1885, was "the forerunner of torpedo boat destroyers that appeared a decade later". Designed to Japanese specifications and ordered from the London Yarrow shipyards in 1885, she was transported in parts to Japan, where she was assembled and launched in 1887. She was armed with four 1-pounder (37 mm) quick-firing guns and six torpedo tubes, reached 19 knots (35 km/h), and at 203 tons, was the largest torpedo boatyet. In her trials in 1889, Kotaka demonstrated that she could go beyond a role of coastal defense, and was capable of following larger ships on the high seas. The Yarrow shipyards, builder of the parts for the Kotaka, "considered Japan to have effectively invented the destroyer".

Almost immediately after the order of Kotaka was placed, Fernando Villaamil, second officer of the Ministry of the Navy of Spain where he was put in charge of developing the concept of a new ship designed to combat torpedo boats, placed an order for a large torpedo gunboat in November 1885, with the British builder James and George Thompson, of Clydebank, not far from where the Yarrow shipyards would move from London twenty years later. The ship, named Destructor (literally Destroyer), was