HMS Magdala (1870)

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Career

Builder:	Thames Ironworks & Shipbuilding Company
Laid down:	October 6, 1868
Launched:	March 2, 1870
Completed:	November 1870
Fate:	Broken up, 1904
General characteristics
Displacement:	3,344 tons
Length:	225 ft (69 m)
Beam:	45 ft (14 m)
Draught:	15 ft 4 in (4.7 m)
Propulsion:	Two-shaft Ravenhill, I.H.P.= 1,436
Speed:	10.6 knots (20 km/h)
Complement:	155
Armament 1870:	Four 10 inch muzzle-loading rifles
Armament 1892:	Four 8 inch breech loaders
Armour:	Belt 8 inches amidships, 6 inches fore and aft Breastwork 9 to 8 inches Turrets 10 inches faces, 9 inches sides Deck 1.5 inches Breastwork deck 1 inch

HMS Magdala was a breastwork monitor, the sister ship of HMS Cerberus, and was built specifically to serve as harbour defence ship at Bombay (now Mumbai).

Like her sister, she was designed from the outset to dispense totally with a sailing rig, and to rely completely on her steam engines for her mobility. It was accepted that the steam engines of the period were inefficient, conferring only limited range on the ships mounting them; and that ships of modest displacement could not carry vast stocks of coal to increase their range: but Magdala was intended only as a harbour defence ship and was never expected to make sea voyages of any length. Indeed, with the exception of her delivery voyage to India, she never did so.

[edit] Service history

She was fitted, like HMS Cerberus, with a temporary sailing rig for the passage to her intended home base. She made the trip under sail in the middle of winter without escort, as her builders (Thames Iron Works, Blackwall), considered her sufficiently seaworthy as to make the trip safe. Her life thereafter was wholly spent in Bombay harbour, with occasional short trips to sea for firing practice.