Qualla: HMS Warrior (1860)

HMS Warrior (1860): Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Frederick Settle, Public domain. Queen Victoria herself wrote to the Admiralty to ask whether Britain was ready for war. The French had launched Gloire in 1859, an ocean-going wooden ship sheathed in iron, and overnight the Royal Navy's wooden fleet looked obsolete. The answer Britain gave was unprecedented in size, in cost, and in conception. She was christened Warrior, and she would be the longest, fastest, most heavily armoured warship in the world.

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Image: William Frederick Settle | Public domain

HMS Warrior (1860): Built to Answer France

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edwin Weedon, Public domain. On 11 May 1859, the order went to the Thames Ironworks at Blackwall. The Chief Constructor Isaac Watts and Chief Engineer Thomas Lloyd designed her around a wrought-iron hull backed by teak, with a central armoured citadel protecting the guns. Construction nearly bankrupted the b...

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Image: Edwin Weedon | Public domain

HMS Warrior (1860): A Floating Citadel

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0. Warrior carried forty guns behind plates of wrought iron hammered rather than rolled - an old technique applied to a new purpose. Tests at Shoeburyness in October 1861 declared her armour "practically invulnerable to the ordnance at the time in use." She combined steam and sail. ...

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Image: Geni | CC BY-SA 4.0

HMS Warrior (1860): Life Between the Guns

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geni, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fifty officers and 656 ratings made her a small floating town. The men slept in hammocks slung between the guns, eighteen of them packed between each pair, while the captain enjoyed two spacious cabins at the stern. The crew raised the heaviest manually hauled anchors in maritime...

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Image: Geni | CC BY-SA 4.0

HMS Warrior (1860): Obsolescence Comes Quickly

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The revolution Warrior began turned on her with brutal speed. Within ten years, mastless capital ships with rotating turrets made her broadside arrangement old-fashioned. In 1875 she was relegated to the reserve as a guardship at Portland. Reclassifications followed without alter...

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Image: Public domain

HMS Warrior (1860): Resurrection at Hartlepool

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit tormentor4555, Public domain. By the 1960s she was a rusting embarrassment. The Duke of Edinburgh chaired a 1968 meeting to consider her fate, and a year later the Maritime Trust was founded. In August 1979 the Royal Navy finally gave her up, and she was towed north to Hartlepool, where a nine-million-pound r...

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Image: tormentor4555 | Public domain

HMS Warrior (1860): A Ship Worth Remembering

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0. She has been berthed in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard since 1987, alongside Nelson's HMS Victory and the Tudor Mary Rose. Half a million people pass through the dockyard each year. Patron of the trust that cared for her is Princess Alexandra of Kent, descendant of the Danish p...

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Image: The wub | CC BY-SA 4.0