page_title: HMS Neptune (1874)
section_title: Design and description
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Neptune (1874) / Design and description
caption_attribution_description: Right elevation and deck plan diagrams depicting British battleship HMS Neptune (1878), originally built as Independencia for Brazil.
context_page_description: HMS Neptune was an ironclad turret ship originally designed and built in Britain for Brazil, but acquired for the Royal Navy in 1878. Modifications to suit the Royal Navy took three years to complete and the ship did not begin her first commission until 1883 with the Channel Fleet. She was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1885, but refitted in Portsmouth in 1886–87. Neptune then became the coastguard ship for the 1st Class Reserve at Holyhead until 1893 when she was placed in reserve in Portsmouth. While she was being towed to the breakers in 1903, Neptune unintentionally rammed HMS Victory, then serving as a training hulk for the Naval Signal School, collided with HMS Hero, and narrowly missed several other ships. She was scrapped in Germany in 1904.
context_section_description: HMS Neptune was designed by Sir Edward Reed for the Brazilian Navy in 1872 as a masted version of HMS Devastation, a larger, sea-going version of the Cerberus-class breastwork monitors, and was given the provisional name Independencia. Adding masts, however, meant adding a forecastle at the bow and a poop deck at the stern to provide the space required for the masts and rigging. These blocked the firing arcs of the gun turrets so that they were deprived of the axial fire which was the original design's greatest virtue. The ship resembled, instead, an enlarged version of HMS Monarch.
  During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 tensions dramatically escalated between Russia and Great Britain as the latter feared that the victorious Russian armies would occupy the Turkish capital of Constantinople, something that the British were not prepared to tolerate. They mobilized much of the Royal Navy in case war did break out and purchased a number of ironclads under construction, including Independencia, in 1878. The Brazilians sold the ship for £600,000, nearly twice as much as the £370,000 paid for Devastation a few years earlier. Another £89,172 was spent to bring her up to the standards of the Royal Navy. In British service she was deemed "a white elephant, being a thoroughly bad ship in most respects—unlucky, full of inherent faults and small vices, and at times a danger to her own consorts".
  Neptune was 300 feet (91.4 m) long between perpendiculars. She had a beam of 63 feet (19.2 m) and a draft of 25 feet (7.6 m). The ship normally displaced 8,964 long tons (9,108 t) and 9,311 long tons (9,460 t) at deep load.
  Neptune proved a poor seakeeper as she was wet, difficult to manoeuvre and a heavy roller. She had a 12-foot (3.7 m) skylight over the wardroom, which as a result often flooded while the ship was at sea.
caption: Right elevation and deck plan (with masts truncated) as depicted in Brassey's Naval Annual 1888
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