HMS Shannon (1875)

HMS Shannon as she appeared after her 1881 refit.
History
United Kingdom
Name:	HMS Shannon
Builder:	Pembroke Dockyard
Laid down:	29 August 1873
Launched:	11 November 1875
Commissioned:	17 September 1877
Fate:	Sold for scrapping 12 December 1899
General characteristics
Displacement:	5,670 tons
Length:	260 ft (79 m)
Beam:	54 ft (16.5 m)
Draught:	22 ft 3 in (6.78 m)
Propulsion:	Sail As built, with 24000 ft² (2200 m²) of sail reduced shortly afterwards to 21500 ft² (2000 m²) Coal fired Laird compound horizontal steam engine 8 × cylindrical boilers single screw 3,370 indicated horsepower (2.5 MW)
Speed:	12.25 knots (23 km/h) maximum
Range:	Bunker capacity originally 280 tons coal later increased to 560 tons sails allowed range only limited by food and water capacity.
Complement:	452
Armament:	2 × 10 inch (254 mm) muzzle-loading rifled guns 7 × 9 inch (229 mm) muzzle-loading rifled guns From 1881: 6 x 20 pounder (9 kg) breech-loading guns From 1881: 4 x torpedo tubes
Armour:	Belt: 6 to 9 in (150 to 230 mm) on 10 to 13 in (250 to 330 mm) teak Deck: 1.5 to 3 in (38 to 76 mm) Bulkheads: 8 to 9 in (200 to 230 mm) Conning tower: 9 in (230 mm)

The eighth HMS Shannon was the first British armoured cruiser. She was the last Royal Navy ironclad to be built which had a propeller that could be hoisted out of the water to reduce drag when she was under sail, and the first to have an armoured deck.

Shannon was built in response to two threats. The instructions of the Admiralty to the designer, Nathaniel Barnaby, were to design an ironclad "capable of competing with the second class Ironclads of foreign navies". This meant in particular the ten French armoured corvettes of the Alma and La Galissonnière classes, though the ironclads of the smaller navies of Asia, and the Americas also featured. The British counter to these ships were the Audacious and Swiftsure classes of second-class ironclad of the 1860s. Shannon 's design was in the lineage of these ships, though the tactical landscape was changing. At the same time as Shannon was being planned, the Russian navy launched the first armoured cruisers, General Admiral and her sister Gerzog Edinburgski. These ships were intended for the traditional cruiser mission of commerce raiding, but were armoured and armed on the same scale as a second-class ironclad. The existence of these ships mean that Shannon was now expected to act as a counter to them, and perform the commerce protection missions which had previously been the preserve of unarmoured cruisers, most recently the Inconstant.