HMS Warrior (1860)
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| Career (UK) |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | May 11, 1859 |
| Laid down: | May 25, 1859 |
| Launched: | December 29, 1860 |
| Commissioned: | August 1, 1861 |
| Status: | Museum ship |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 9,210 tons |
| Length: | 418 feet (127.4 m) |
| Beam: | 58 feet (17.7 m) |
| Draught: | 27 feet (8.2 m) |
| Propulsion: | Penn Jet-Condensing, horizontal-trunk, single expansion steam engine. |
| Speed: | 13 knots (sail) 14.5 knots (steam) 17.5 knots (combined) |
| Complement: | 705 |
| Armament: | 26 muzzle-loading 68 pounders 10 breech-loading 110 pounders (Armstrong guns) 4 breech-loading 40 pounders (Armstrong guns) |
HMS Warrior (1860) (also known as Vernon III and Oil Fuel Hulk C77) was the world's first ocean-going iron-hulled armoured battleship. She was built for the Royal Navy as a counter to the first ironclad warship, the French battleship La Gloire (launched 1859). When she was launched, the 4.5 inch thick wrought iron armoured belt meant that she was impervious to all naval cannon in service at that time, and she was easily the most powerful warship in the world. The only significant vulnerability was the lack of armour around the rudder.
She was propelled by both sails and steam - her coal capacity of 853 tons was insufficient alone for extended cruising. The screw could be winched up clear of the water to reduce drag, although in practice the screw was run at low speed when cruising, this having the same drag-reducing effect. Because of the Warrior's single gun deck, she was classified as a frigate by the RN, in spite of having greater combat potential than existing ships-of-the-line.
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[edit] Service career
She froze to the slipway when she was launched on December 29, 1860 at the Thames Ironworks at Blackwall, London during the coldest winter for 50 years and six tugs were required to haul her into the river. She was completed on 24 October 1861 at a cost of £357,291.
The rapid march of naval technology meant that she and her sister Black Prince became obsolete within ten years. On 1 April 1875 she was relegated to the Reserve Fleet ranks and on 31 May 1883, withdrawn from sea service. Her guns and upper masts were removed around this time.
She was used as a storage hulk, and from 1902-1904 as a depot ship for a flotilla of destroyers. Her name was changed to Vernon III in 1904, when she joined Portsmouth-based Vernon, the Royal Navy's torpedo training school. Her role was supplying steam and electricity to the neighbouring hulks that made up Vernon. In October 1923, Vernon was transferred to a newly-built shore installation, rendering Warrior and her companion hulks redundant. With no further use for the old ironclad, the Royal Navy put her up for sale in 1924.
[edit] Decrepitude
Fortunately for Warrior, a downturn in demand for scrap iron was occurring when the Navy decided to sell her off. There was no commercial interest in the old ship, and she remained at Portsmouth for another five years. Finally, in March 1929, efforts aimed towards selling Warrior for scrap were abandoned, and she was taken in tow for her new home: Pembroke Dock in Milford Haven, Wales. Upon arrival she was transformed into a shipkeeper's home and floating oil jetty known only as Oil Fuel Hulk C77. A similar fate had already overtaken several of her successors by this time; in 1926 HMS Valiant became a floating oil tank at Hamoaze, while HMS Agincourt and HMS Northumberland were both stripped down in 1909 and subsequently used as coal hulks.
For the next fifty years, Warrior lay just offshore from an oil depot at Llanion Cove, occasionally being towed to a nearby dry dock for maintenance work. She refueled something close to 5,000 ships between 1929 and 1979. During that time, the rest of Britain's surviving ironclads—and their modern equivalent, the battleships—were all sold off for scrap. Her last surviving contemporary, Agincourt, was scrapped in 1960 after fifty years' service as a coal hulk at Harwich.
[edit] Salvation
Warrior was saved from a similar fate by the efforts of the Maritime Trust. As the world's first successful iron-hulled battleship, she was recognised as one of the Royal Navy's most historically important warships. In 1968 the Duke of Edinburgh chaired a meeting regarding the possibility of rescuing and restoring Warrior, and a year later the Maritime Trust was established with a view towards saving the decepit ironclad as well as other historic ships. Throughout the 1970s the Maritime Trust carried out negotiations and feasibility studies regarding Warrior, and finally obtained control of the ship in August 1979.
Restoration of Warrior for use as a museum ship began in August 1979, when she began her 800 mile journey to her temporary home at Gray's Shipyard in Hartlepool, where the £8 million restoration project would be carried out. Warrior arrived in Hartlepool on September 3, 1979 and restoration work began in earnest shortly thereafter, including the removal of a thick concrete layer poured into her hull as part of the conversion to an oil jetty. Eighty tons of rubbish were also removed from the hull. Over the next eight years, Warrior's decks, interior compartments, engines, woodwork and fittings were restored or recreated, her masts and funnels were rebuilt, and her original figurehead was rescued and reattached. By mid-1987 the restoration was completed, and on June 16, 1987 she arrived at her current berth in Portsmouth.
The rejuvinated ironclad was renamed Warrior (1860) to avoid confusion with the present HMS Warrior, which is the operational headquarters of the Royal Navy at Northwood.
See HMS Warrior for other ships of this name.
