HMS Warrior

HMS Warrior is shown here backlit under both sail and steam, her canvas glowing as smoke trails from her twin funnels: a ship caught at the exact moment two ages of naval power met.

Ordered in 1859 as Britain's answer to the French ironclad Gloire, Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the world's first iron-hulled, armour-plated warships. Built at the Thames Ironworks in Blackwall and launched on 29 December 1860, she combined a wrought-iron hull, a full ship rig and a steam engine capable of driving her at 14 knots — making her, on completion, the largest and most powerful warship afloat. She was commissioned in August 1861 under her first captain, Arthur Cochrane.

For all her power, Warrior never fired a shot in anger. Within a decade, the arrival of mastless capital ships such as HMS Devastation had already made her obsolete, and she was placed in reserve in 1875 and decommissioned in 1883. She went on to serve as a depot ship before being reduced to an oil fuel hulk from 1927 through the Second World War.

An eight-year restoration at Hartlepool returned her to her 1860s appearance, and since 1987 she has been preserved as a museum ship at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, moored close to HMS Victory as one of the most complete surviving examples of Victorian naval engineering.