HMS Warrior (1860)
 Warrior
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom | |
| Name | Warrior |
| Ordered | 11 May 1859 |
| Builder | Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, Blackwall, London |
| Cost | £377,292 |
| Laid down | after 6 June 1859 |
| Launched | 29 December 1860 |
| Completed | 24 October 1861 |
| Commissioned | 1 August 1861 |
| Decommissioned | 31 May 1883 |
| Renamed |
|
| Status | Museum ship (50°47′54″N 01°06′32″W / 50.79833°N 1.10889°W) |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & type | Warrior-class armoured frigate |
| Displacement | 9,137 long tons (9,284 t) |
| Length | 420 ft (128.0 m) (o/a) |
| Beam | 58 ft 4 in (17.8 m) |
| Draught | 26 ft 10 in (8.2 m) |
| Installed power |
|
| Propulsion | 1 shaft; 1 Trunk steam engine |
| Sail plan | Ship rig |
| Speed | 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) |
| Range | 2,100 nmi (3,900 km; 2,400 mi) at 11 kn (20 km/h; 13 mph) |
| Complement | 706 officers and ratings |
| Armament |
|
| Armour | |
HMS Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate[Note 1] built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1873 commissioning of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883.
She subsequently served as a storeship and depot ship, and in 1904 was assigned to the Royal Navy's torpedo training school. The ship was converted into an oil jetty in 1927 and remained in that role until 1979, at which point she was donated by the Navy to The Maritime Trust for restoration. The restoration process took eight years, during which many of her features and fittings were either restored or recreated. When this was finished she returned to Portsmouth as a museum ship. Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Warrior has been based in Portsmouth since 1987.
Background
[edit]The launching of the steam-powered ship of the line Napoléon by France in 1850 began an arms race between France and Britain that lasted for a decade. The destruction of a wooden Ottoman fleet by a Russian fleet firing explosive shells in the Battle of Sinop, early in the Crimean War, followed by the destruction of Russian coastal fortifications during the Battle of Kinburn in the Crimean War by French armoured floating batteries, and tests against armour plates, showed the superiority of ironclads over unarmoured ships. France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire, upset the balance of power by neutralising the British investment in wooden ships of the line[1] and started an invasion scare in Britain, as the Royal Navy lacked any ships that could counter Gloire and her two sisters. The situation was perceived to be so serious that Queen Victoria asked the Admiralty if the navy was adequate for the tasks that it would have to perform in wartime.[2] Warrior and her sister were ordered in response.[3]
The Admiralty initially specified that the ship should be capable of 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph), and have a full set of sails for worldwide cruising range. Iron construction was chosen as it gave the best trade-off between speed and protection; an iron hull was lighter than a wooden one of the same size and shape, giving more capacity for guns, armour and engines.[4]
Design and description
[edit]Overview
[edit]The Chief Constructor of the Navy Isaac Watts and the Chief Engineer Thomas Lloyd designed the ship.[5] To minimise risk they copied the hull design of the large wooden frigate HMS Mersey, modifying it for iron construction and to accommodate an armoured box, or citadel, amidships along the single gun deck, which protected most of the ship's guns.[6] Ships with this configuration of guns and armour are classified as broadside ironclads.[7]
The Warrior-class design used many well-proven technologies that had been used in ocean-going ships for years, including her iron hull, marine steam engine, and screw propeller; only her wrought-iron armour was a major technological advance. Naval architect and historian David K. Brown wrote, "What made [Warrior] truly novel was the way in which these individual aspects were blended together, making her the biggest and most powerful warship in the world."[8] Faster, better armoured and harder to hit than her rivals, she was superior to any existing naval ship. The Admiralty stopped construction of all wooden ships of the line, and ordered another 11 ironclads over the next few years. Jacky Fisher, who was the ship's gunnery lieutenant in 1863–1864, later wrote that most people did not realise at the time what a significant change it would bring about: "It certainly was not appreciated that this, our first armourclad ship of war, would cause a fundamental change in what had been in vogue for something like a thousand years."[9]
Although built in response to Gloire, the Warrior had a very different operational concept from the French ship, which was meant to replace wooden ships of the line. The Warriors were designed by Watts as 40-gun armoured frigates, not intended to stand in the line of battle, as the Admiralty was uncertain about their ability to withstand concentrated fire from wooden two- and three-deck ships of the line. Unlike Gloire, they were planned to be fast enough to force battle on a fleeing enemy and to control to their own advantage the range at which a battle was fought.[10] In contrast to Gloire's square profile, Warrior has a clipper bow, but she is twice as long as a typical clipper ship.[11]
HMS Warrior is 380 ft 2 in (115.9 m) long between perpendiculars and 420 ft (128.0 m) long overall. She has a beam of 58 ft 4 in (17.8 m) and a draught of 26 ft 9 in (8.2 m). The ship displaces 9,137 long tons (9,284 t) and has a tonnage of 6,109 tons burthen.[12] The ship's length made her relatively unmanoeuvrable, making it harder for her to use her strengthened stem for ramming, an ancient tactic that was coming back into use at the time.[9] The ends of the hull are subdivided by watertight transverse bulkheads and decks into 92 compartments, and the hull has a double bottom underneath the engine and boiler rooms.[13]
Armament
[edit]
The armament of the Warrior-class ships was originally intended to be 40 smoothbore, muzzle-loading 68-pounder guns, 19 on each side on the main deck and one each fore and aft as chase guns on the upper deck. The 7.9 in (201 mm) 68-pounder had a range of 3,200 yd (2,900 m) with (solid) round shot. During construction the armament was changed to include 10 Armstrong 110-pounder guns, an early rifled breech loader (RBL) design, along with 26 68-pounders, and four RBL Armstrong 40-pounder guns with a calibre of 4.75 in (121 mm) and a maximum range of 3,800 yd (3,500 m). It had been planned to replace all the 68-pounders with the innovative 110-pounder, whose 7 in (178 mm) shell could reach 4,000 yd (3,700 m), but poor results in armour-penetration tests halted this.[14] During the first use in action of a 110-pounder aboard HMS Euryalus in 1863, the gun was incorrectly loaded and the vent piece was blown out of the breech when fired.[15][16] They were labour-intensive to load and fire,[17] and were henceforth only used with a reduced propellant charge, which left them ineffective against ironclad ships.[18]
All the guns could fire either solid shot or explosive shells. The 68-pounders could also fire molten iron shells, filled with iron melted in a furnace between the two forward boilers.[19] The 40-pounder Armstrong guns were replaced with a better design of the same calibre in 1863.[20] Warrior's original armament was replaced during her 1864–1867 refit with 24 7-inch and four 8 in (203 mm) rifled muzzle-loading (RML) guns. The ship also received four RBL Armstrong 20-pounders for use as saluting guns.[21] The RML 8-inch gun could penetrate 9.6 in (244 mm) of wrought iron armour at the muzzle, and the RML 7-inch gun could pierce 7.7 in (196 mm).[22]
Armour
[edit]_bulkhead_armour.jpg)
Warrior's armour consisted of 4.5 in (114 mm) of wrought iron backed by 18 in (457 mm) of teak.[11] The iron armour was made up of 3 by 12 ft (0.91 by 3.66 m) plates that interlocked by the tongue and groove method. It was bolted through the teak to the iron hull. The teak consisted of two 9 in-thick (229 mm) layers laid at right angles to each other; they strengthened the armour by damping the shock waves caused by the impact of shells that would otherwise break the bolts connecting the armour to the hull.[23] Unlike most later ship armour, Warrior's armour was made by a process of hammering rather than rolling.[24] Based on tests at Shoeburyness in October 1861 when the Warrior was launched, it "was practically invulnerable to the ordnance at the time in use".[25]
The armour covered the middle 213 ft (64.9 m) of the ship and extended 16 ft (4.9 m) above the waterline and 6 ft (1.8 m) below it. The guns on the main deck were protected from raking fire by 4.5-inch transverse bulkheads. The ends of the ship were unprotected, but were subdivided into watertight compartments to minimise flooding. The lack of armour at the stern rendered the steering gear and rudder vulnerable.[26]
Crew
[edit]The ship's crew comprised 50 officers and 656 ratings in 1863.[27] The majority of the crew had to do physically demanding tasks; one such duty was the raising of the heaviest manually hauled anchors in maritime history. The day-to-day life of her crew differed little from those on the navy's traditional wooden-hulled vessels.[28]
The majority of the crew lived on the single gun deck of the Warrior; these crewmen slept in hammocks slung from the sides and deck beams, with up to 18 men between each pair of guns. The officers berthed in the rear of the ship in small individual cabins; the wardroom was also the officers' mess. The captain had two spacious, well-furnished cabins.[28]
Of the ratings, 122 were Royal Marines. As an experiment during the ship's first commission, all of Warrior's marines were from Royal Marine Artillery; subsequently some marine infantrymen were assigned as was the usual naval practice. The marines manned the aft section of guns and slung their hammocks between the crew's accommodation and the officers' cabins.[29]