HMS Conqueror (1881)

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Career
Laid down:	April 28, 1879
Floated out:	September 8, 1881
Completed:	March 1886
Broken up:	1907
Specification
Displacement:	6,200 tons
Length:	270 ft
Beam:	58 ft
Draught:	22 ft light, 24 ft 3 inches deep load
Engine:	Two-shaft Humphreys & Tennant inverted compound I.H.P. = 4,500
Speed:	14 knots
Complement:	330
Armament:	An armoured ram Two 12-inch breech-loaders Four 6-inch breech-loaders Seven 6-pounder quick-firer Six above-water torpedo tubes
Armour:	Belt 12 inches tapering to 8 inches Citadel 12 inches to 10.5 inches Turret 14 inches face, 12 inches sides Conning tower 12 inches to 6 inches Bulkhead 11 inches Deck 2.5 inches to 1.25 inches.

HMS Conqueror was an ironclad battleship of the Victorian Royal Navy, whose main armament was an armoured ram.

She was the first ship of the Conqueror class to be laid down, her only sister-ship being HMS Hero, who was completed some two years later. At the time of her design it was thought that ramming attacks were the most effective offensive manoevre against armoured warship, as the armour of the period was, for a short time, able to defend against the majority of contemporary guns extant. This belief was reinforced by the action at the battle of Lissa, when the Austrian battleship Ferdinand Max rammed and sank the Italian Re D'Italia. The Italian ship was at the time a stationary target, a detail which it appears did not receive, in naval architects minds, the attention it deserved.

Her breech-loading guns were of 12-inch calibre, and were twenty-five calibres (25 feet) long. They fired a shell weighing 714 pounds with a muzzle velocity of 1,1914 ft/second, and could penetrate 10 inches of armour if the shell struck at or near a ninety-degree angle; much less, however, in the much more likely event of an oblique impact. They were placed very near to the deck, and it was found that a discharge over the bow caused marked blast damage to the deck and associated fittings. Firing abaft the beam caused blast damage to the bridge and superstructure, so in practice the guns could only fire on the beam, through an arc of some 45 degrees. It is, of course, the case that the heavy artillery was only intended to be used against a target which had evaded a ramming attack, and was therefore on Conqueror's beam.

The smaller guns were intended for use against small targets which could evade the ram and were not worth using the heavy artillery for. The torpedo tubes - six was the greatest number carried to date by a battleship - were placed aft and were intended for use against a target placed by accident or design astern of Conqueror, when the main armament would be valueless.

[edit] Service History

She was commissioned on July 5, 1887 for the Jubilee Review. She went int reserve at Devonport, becoming tender to the gunnery school Cambridge in 1889. She took part in manoevres on six occasions, and was not otherwise ever out of sight of land. She paid off in July 1902, and remained swinging at anchor at Rothesay until being sold in 1907.