England / Hampshire - National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth

HMS Warrior (1860)

 

HMS Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1871 launching of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883.

 

She subsequently served as a storeship and depot ship, and in 1904 was assigned to the Royal Navy's torpedo training school. The ship was converted into an oil jetty in 1927 and remained in that role until 1979, at which point she was donated by the Navy to the Maritime Trust for restoration. The restoration process took eight years, during which many of her features and fittings were either restored or recreated. When this was finished she returned to Portsmouth as a museum ship. Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Warrior has been based in Portsmouth since 1987.

 

The launching of the steam-powered ship of the line Napoléon by France in 1850 began an arms race between France and Britain that lasted for a decade. The destruction of a wooden Ottoman fleet by a Russian fleet firing explosive shells in the Battle of Sinop, early in the Crimean War, followed by the destruction of Russian coastal fortifications during the Battle of Kinburn in the Crimean War by French armoured floating batteries, and tests against armour plates, showed the superiority of ironclads over unarmoured ships. France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire, upset the balance of power by neutralising the British investment in wooden ships of the line and started an invasion scare in Britain, as the Royal Navy lacked any ships that could counter Gloire and her two sisters. The situation was perceived to be so serious that Queen Victoria asked the Admiralty if the navy was adequate for the tasks that it would have to perform in wartime. Warrior and her sister were ordered in response.

 

The Admiralty initially specified that the ship should be capable of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph), and have a full set of sails for worldwide cruising range. Iron construction was chosen as it gave the best trade-off between speed and protection; an iron hull was lighter than a wooden one of the same size and shape, giving more capacity for guns, armour and engines.

 

Chief Constructor of the Navy Isaac Watts and Chief Engineer Thomas Lloyd designed the ship. To minimise risk they copied the hull design of the large wooden frigate HMS Mersey, modifying it for iron construction and to accommodate an armoured box, or citadel, amidships along the single gun deck, which protected most of the ship's guns. Ships with this configuration of guns and armour are classified as broadside ironclads.

 

The Warrior-class design used many well-proven technologies that had been used in ocean-going ships for years, including her iron hull, steam engine, and screw propeller; only her wrought-iron armour was a major technological advance. Naval architect and historian David K. Brown wrote, "What made [Warrior] truly novel was the way in which these individual aspects were blended together, making her the biggest and most powerful warship in the world." Being faster, better armoured and harder to hit than her rivals, she was superior to any existing naval ship. The Admiralty immediately stopped the construction of all wooden ships of the line, and ordered another eleven ironclads over the next few years. Jacky Fisher, who was the ship's gunnery lieutenant in 1863–64, later wrote that in spite of this, most people did not realise at the time what a significant change it would bring about: "It certainly was not appreciated that this, our first armourclad ship of war, would cause a fundamental change in what had been in vogue for something like a thousand years."

 

Although built in response to Gloire, the Warriors had a very different operational concept from the French ship, which was meant to replace wooden ships of the line. The Warriors were designed by Watts as 40-gun armoured frigates and were not intended to stand in the line of battle, as the Admiralty was uncertain about their ability to withstand concentrated fire from wooden two- and three-deck ships of the line. Unlike Gloire, they were planned to be fast enough to force battle on a fleeing enemy and to control the range at which a battle was fought to their own advantage. In contrast to Gloire's square profile, Warrior has a clipper bow, but she is twice as long as a typical clipper ship.

 

HMS Warrior is 380 feet 2 inches (115.9 m) long between perpendiculars and 420 feet (128.0 m) long overall. She has a beam of 58 feet 4 inches (17.8 m) and a draught of 26 feet 9 inches (8.2 m). The ship displaces 9,137 long tons (9,284 t) and has a tonnage of 6,109 tons burthen. The ship's length made her relatively unmanoeuvrable, making it harder for her to use her strengthened stem for ramming, an ancient tactic that was coming back into use at the time. The ends of the hull are subdivided by watertight transverse bulkheads and decks into 92 compartments, and the hull has a double bottom underneath the engine and boiler rooms.

 

Restoring Warrior was discussed in the early 1960s, but did not develop into a serious project. In 1967, the Greater London Council proposed to restore the ship as an attraction in London, but Warrior was still required in Pembroke by the Royal Navy and the scheme went no further. In 1968 the Duke of Edinburgh chaired a meeting that discussed preserving and restoring Warrior and other historic vessels, and a year later The Maritime Trust was established to save the decrepit ironclad and other historic ships. The Maritime Trust and a major supporter, the Manifold Trust led by the Conservative MP John Smith, maintained an interest in Warrior. In 1976 the Royal Navy announced that the Llanion Oil Depot would close in 1978, and the Manifold Trust began to seek funds to restore her. With the promise of financial support for restoration, the Royal Navy donated the ship to the trust in 1979. The Ship's Preservation Trust acquired ownership of the ship in 1983; it became the Warrior Preservation Trust in 1985.

 

In August 1979 Warrior began her 800-mile (1,300 km) journey to her temporary home in the Coal Dock at Hartlepool for restoration as a museum ship. She arrived on 2 September 1979 and began the £9 million restoration project, largely funded by the Manifold Trust. The Maritime Trust decided to restore Warrior to her 1862 condition with the aim that no further major work would be necessary for the next 20 years. The first two years of the restoration were generally devoted to safely removing material added after her first commission, like the poop deck and the 200 long tons (200 t) of concrete decking. Intensive research was done to find detailed descriptions of the ship and her equipment as of 1862 to make the restoration as accurate as economically feasible. Sources included surviving official records, and the papers of those who had served on the ship during her active service. Bolt-holes and ridges in the paint gave clues to the location of some fittings and fixtures, and the sketch plans of Midshipman Henry Murray, found in Captain Cochrane's Letter Book, showed the locations of the armament, moveable fittings and stores.

 

Work on carving a replacement for Warrior's figurehead, which was destroyed in the 1960s, began in 1981 using photographs of the original as a guide. The 12-foot (3.7 m) work-in-progress was displayed at the 1982 London International Boat Show with the carvers still at work; it dominated coverage of the show. Before it was finished in mid-1983, the figurehead appeared on the BBC children's television programme Blue Peter. For much of 1984 it was displayed at the Main Gate of the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard. It was mounted on the ship on 6 February 1985.

 

Replacement of the ship's 86-foot-3-inch (26.3 m)-tall, 42-inch (1.1 m)-wide lower masts in wood was not feasible, so they were made of steel tube cut and welded to shape, with a ladder inside each mast to allow access to the platforms on the masts. The three masts and the bowsprit were stepped in place between September 1984 and February 1985. Warrior's engines, boilers and auxiliary machinery were considered too expensive to rebuild, so replicas were built from sheet steel with a few components made from cast iron to duplicate the look of the real equipment. The replica engines can rotate slowly, using electrical power, to allow visitors to imagine how they might have looked in operation.

 

The Woolwich Rotunda Artillery Museum and the States of Jersey lent examples of Warrior's original primary guns, the muzzle-loading 68-pounder and the breech-loading 110-pounder, which were used as moulds for fibreglass replicas. The Armstrong guns were built with working breeches; they, and the muzzles of all the guns, had to be sealed to prevent people leaving rubbish in them. Little information was available on the wooden gun carriages despite extensive research, and a prototype had to be developed and tested before they could be built.

 

In 1985 a new berth beside Portsmouth Harbour railway station was dredged, and a new jetty constructed in preparation for Warrior's arrival in Portsmouth. The ship left Hartlepool on 12 June 1987 under the command of Captain Collin Allen and was towed 390 miles (630 km) to the Solent in four days. When she entered Portsmouth Harbour she was welcomed by thousands of people lining the town walls and shore, and by over 90 boats and ships. She opened as a museum on 27 July. The restored ironclad was renamed HMS Warrior (1860) to avoid confusion with the Northwood Headquarters, commissioned as HMS Warrior in 1963, which was at the time the operational headquarters of the Royal Navy.

 

Warrior is part of the National Historic Fleet, and is berthed in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard complex, which is also the home of Nelson's flagship HMS Victory and the Tudor warship Mary Rose. In 1995 she received over 280,000 visitors, and the whole dockyard receives between 400,000 and 500,000 visitors annually. Warrior continued to be managed by the Warrior Preservation Trust until 2017. In April of that year, the trust was taken over by the National Museum of the Royal Navy and Warrior became part of the museum's fleet. The ship continues to be used as a venue for weddings and functions to generate funds for her maintenance. The trust also maintained a collection of material related to the ship and an archive, although it is not yet open to the public.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Die HMS Warrior aus dem Jahr 1860 war das erste ozeantaugliche Panzerschiff mit eisernem Rumpf. Sie wurde von der britischen Royal Navy als Gegenmaßnahme zum französischen Panzerschiff La Gloire gebaut. Sie gab der gleichnamigen Schiffsklasse ihren Namen und war das Schwesterschiff der HMS Black Prince. Sie liegt heute als Museumsschiff in Portsmouth.

 

Als sie vom Stapel lief, war sie durch ihren 4,5 Zoll (11,43 cm) dicken geschmiedeten Eisengürtel praktisch unverwundbar für die Geschosse der zur Zeit ihres Baus gebräuchlichen Schiffsartillerie. Um die Sinksicherheit noch weiter zu verbessern, war der Rumpf in 92 wasserdichte Abteilungen unterteilt und hatte unterhalb von Maschinenanlage und Munitionsräumen einen Doppelboden. Die einzige bedeutende Verwundbarkeit war die fehlende Panzerung um die Rudermaschine herum, so dass ein unglücklicher Treffer sie manövrierunfähig hätte machen können.

 

Der Hauptantrieb des Schiffes bestand aus einer liegenden zweizylindrigen Dampfmaschine von Penn, die von zehn Kesseln mit Dampf versorgt wurde. Allerdings war der Kohleverbrauch extrem hoch und die 850 t Kohle an Bord reichten nur für knapp 2.100 sm Fahrtstrecke unter optimalen Bedingungen. Daher führte die Warrior weiterhin eine vollständige Takelage als Vollschiff von 4.500 m² Segelfläche. Fuhr sie unter Segeln, dann konnten beide Schornsteine eingezogen werden, um die Handhabung der Segel nicht zu behindern. Die Schraube konnte bei Fahrt unter Segeln in den Rumpf eingezogen werden, um den Wasserwiderstand zu reduzieren. In der Praxis wurde sie jedoch mit langsamer Fahrt weiterbetrieben, da das An- und Abkuppeln der Welle an die Schraube recht mühsam war.

 

Als sie am 29. Dezember 1860 bei den Themse-Eisenwerken bei London vom Stapel laufen sollte, fror sie auf der Slipanlage fest. Dies war im kältesten Winter seit 50 Jahren. Die Warrior wurde am 24. Oktober 1861 fertiggestellt. Die Gesamtkosten betrugen 357.291 Pfund.

 

Die HMS Warrior war ein Batterieschiff – die Kanonen waren in seitlichen Batterien angeordnet und konnten nur zur Seite schießen. Es war geplant das Schiff mit 36 Kanonen zu bestücken. Bei Indienststellung wurde sie jedoch mit 26 68-Pfündern Vorderladern, 10 110-Pfündern Armstrong-Kanonen und 4 40-Pfündern Armstrong-Kanonen bewaffnet. 1863 wurden die 40-Pfünder durch verbesserte Kanonen gleichen Kalibers ersetzt. Vom 22. November 1864 bis zum 25. Juli 1867 wurde das Schiff überholt. Hierbei wurde sie mit 4 8-inch-Kanonen, 24 7-inch-Kanonen und 4 20-Pfündern (Salutkanonen) versehen. Der rasante Fortschritt der Marinetechnologie ließ sie und ihr Schwesterschiff Black Prince innerhalb von 10 Jahren veralten. Am 1. April 1875 wurde sie der ersten Reserveflotte zugeordnet und am 31. Mai 1883 vom Seedienst abgezogen. Ab 17. Januar 1884 wurden ihre Kanonen und die oberen Masten in Portsmouth entfernt.

 

Ihr Rumpf wurde als Lager verwendet, und von 1902 bis 1904 diente sie einer Kreuzerflottille als Depot. Ihr Name wurde 1904, als sie zur Torpedoausbildungsschule Vernon gebracht wurde, in Vernon III geändert. Sie versorgte die dort liegenden Rümpfe mit Dampf und Elektrizität. Im Oktober 1923 erhielt sie ihren alten Namen Warrior wieder.

 

Ein Abschwung in der Nachfrage nach Schrott bewirkte, dass sie sich am 25. April 1925 nicht wie geplant zur Verschrottung verkaufen ließ. Seit 1929 lag sie in der Marinewerft Pembroke Dock in Wales als schwimmernder Ölanleger. Dort blieb sie die folgenden 50 Jahre. Am 27. August 1942 wurde sie nochmals in Oil Fuel Hulk C77 umbenannt, da der Name Warrior mittlerweile für den in Bau befindlichen leichten Flugzeugträger HMS Warrior (R31) der Colossus-Klasse vorgesehen war.

 

Die Restaurierung zum Museumsschiff begann am 3. September 1979 in Hartlepool und wurde 1984 abgeschlossen. Dann wurde sie zu ihrem gegenwärtigen Liegeplatz in Portsmouth geschleppt. Sie wurde in Warrior (1860) umbenannt, um Verwechslungen mit dem gleichnamigen Hauptquartier der Royal Navy in Northwood zu vermeiden.

 

(Wikipedia)

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