The Eagle class patrol craft were a set of steel ships smaller than destroyers but having a greater operational radius than the wooden-hulled, submarine chasers developed in 1917. The submarine chasers' range of about at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h) restricted their operations to off-shore anti-submarine work and denied them an open-ocean escort capability; their high consumption of gasoline and limited fuel storage were handicaps the Eagle class sought to remedy.