HMS Minotaur (1863)

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Career
Laid down:	September 12, 1861
Launched:	December 12, 1863
Completed:	December 19, 1868
Broken up:	1922
Specification
Displacement:	10,690 tons
Length:	400 ft 3 inches between perpendiculars, 407 ft overall
Beam:	59 ft 6 inches
Draught:	27 ft 9 inches
Engine:	One-shaft Penn horizontal trunk, I.H.P.= 6,700
Speed under power:	14.32 knots
Rig:	Five masts, sail area 32,377 sq. ft.
Best speed under sail:	9.5 knots
Complement:	705 nominal, 800 actual
Armament 1868:	Four 9-inch muzzle-loading rifles Twenty-four 7-inch muzzle-loading rifles Eight 24-pounder smoothbore
Armament 1875:	Seventeen 9-inch muzzle-loading rifles Two 20-pounder smoothbore
Armour:	Belt and battery 5.5 inches amidships,4.5 inches fore and aft. 10-inch teak backing. Bulkheads 5.5 inches.

HMS Minotaur was the lead ship of the Minotaur class of broadside ironclad warships, being followed by her sister-ships HMS Agincourt and HMS Northumberland.

She was originally ordered as HMS Elephant,. after the ship once commanded by Nelson seventy years before, but her name was changed to Minotaur during construction. She was launched at Blackwall on the Thames in 1863, after which she was some four years in completing because of changes in design, and experiments with her armament and with her sailing rig. She finally commissioned in Portsmouth in April 1867 as the flagship of the Channel Fleet, which position she retained until 1873. She paid off for re-armament in 1873, and in 1875 resumed her position as flagship, Channel Fleet. In 1887 she was demoted to the Reserve in Portsmouth.

In 1893 HMS Minotaur was re-named HMS Boscawen II and used as a training ship at Portland; from 1905 to 1922 she fulfilled the rôle of training ship at Harwich under the name of HMS Ganges.

She was sold in 1922, sixty-one years after she was laid down. She retained her masts and her black, white and buff livery to the end of her days.