There were two areas in which HMS Warrior and her sister-ship, HMS Black Prince were not ‘cutting edge’. No wooden hulled ships could cope with that! So the French naval architect Stanislas Charles Henri Dupuy de Lome designed La Gloire with iron armour plating and 36 × 164 mm (6.5 in) rifled muzzle-loading guns.Ī model showing how the propellor assembly was lifted up with a derrick In particular, the development of rifled cannon enabled shells to be fired and arrive on target, pointy end first, which meant a detonator could be fitted to fire an explosive charge. This was a period of rapid advances in military technology². At 420 ft she was the largest warship in the world. HMS Warrior was designed and built in response to a shocking development in France – the sudden appearance of La Gloire, the first iron-clad warship. Well, she was technically advanced but only as a halfway point in the transition from wooden, sail-powered ships-of-the-line to steam-powered armoured dreadnoughts. So how come she never distinguished herself in action? The operational history of HMS Warrior 1860¹, the world’s first iron-hulled, armoured warship was both dull and brief, and that’s what makes her so interesting, because when launched she was, without question, the most powerful warship afloat.
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