HMS Ajax (1880)

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Career

Laid down:	March 21, 1876
Launched:	March 10, 1880
Completed:	March 30, 1883
Broken up:	1904
General Characteristics
Displacement:	8,510 tons
Length:	300 ft 9 inches
Beam:	66 ft
Draught:	23 ft 6 inches
Engine:	Two-shaft Pen inverted compound, I.H.P.= 6,000
Speed:	13 knots
Complement:	345
Armament:	Four 12.5 inch muzzle-loading rifles Two 6 inch breech loaders
Armour:	Citadel 18 inches tapering to 15 inches Turret faces 16 inches, sides 14 inches Conning tower 12 inches Bulkheads 16.5 inches to 13.5 inches Deck 3 inches

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Ajax.

HMS Ajax was the first of the two Victorian Royal Navy Ajax class ironclad battleships to be laid down, but was completed one day later than her sister, HMS Agamemnon. She carried her main artillery in centrally mounted turrets.

She was designed by Nathaniel Barnaby, working under strict Admiralty-imposed limitations, as a smaller and cheaper version of HMS Inflexible; unfortunately the need, imposed by budgetary constraints, to produce a smaller ship produced a vessel with all of the shortcomings of Inflexible but with none of her virtues.

Her guns were of 12.5 inches calibre, the largest that could be accommodated on the displacement. They were carried in two double turrets mounted 'en echelon' in the waist of the ship. the intention was that, by being mounted off centre, one gun in each turret would be able to fire directly ahead or directly astern, thus allowing for at least two guns to be able to point on any bearing. In practice, firing close to the keel line caused significant blast damage to the superstructure, so in reality gunfire was limited to the broadside.

Ajax, and her sister Agamemnon, were the first British battleships to be designed without any sailing rig whatsoever.

[edit] Service History

She was commissioned on April 30, 1885 into the Special Service Squadron commanded by Admiral Hornby; in August 1885, when the Russian war scare was over, she was posted as guardship at Greenock, where she remained with occasional sea-time for manouvres until 1891, when she was reduced to Reserve. She was further reduced to Fleet Reserve in 1893, and to Dockyard Reserve in 1901, and was sold in 1904.