HMS Warrior (1860)
HMS Warrior
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Warrior |
| Ordered: | 11 May 1859 |
| Builder: | Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, Blackwall, London |
| Cost: | £377,292 |
| Laid down: | About August 1859 |
| Launched: | 29 December 1860 |
| Commissioned: | 1 August 1861 |
| Decommissioned: | 31 May 1883 |
| Renamed: |
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| Status: | Museum ship |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and 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 enlisted men |
| Armament: |
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| Armour: | |
HMS Warrior was a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–61. 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 1871 launching of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – that is, 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.
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 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.Warrior and her sister were ordered in response.
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Wikipedia