page_title: HMS Warrior (1860)
section_title: Construction and service
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Warrior (1860) / Construction and service
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Het geschutsdek aan boord van de HMS Warrior te Portsmouth, Engeland
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: Warrior was ordered on 11 May 1859 from Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in Blackwall, London. The ship was laid down some time after 6 June 1859 on the West Ham side of Bow Creek when the P&O ocean liner Seine was launched, and the slipway was reinforced to support Warrior's weight. Full-scale production of the ship's iron began in August, and the construction probably began in mid-August. Indecision by the Admiralty and frequent design changes caused many delays and nearly drove her builders bankrupt before a grant of £50,000 was awarded to keep them solvent. Her launching on 29 December 1860 was during the coldest winter for 50 years. She was frozen to her slipway and required the use of hydraulic rams, additional tugs, and dockworkers running from side to side on the upper deck to rock her free. Warrior was commissioned in August 1861 to conduct her sea trials; she was completed on 24 October for £377,292, almost twice the cost of a contemporary wooden ship of the line. Between March and June 1862, defects exposed during her trials were rectified, and damage repaired. Changes included the fitting of a lighter bowsprit and a shorter jib boom, along with the provision of extra heads amidships.
  The ship was initially assigned to the Channel Squadron under the command of Captain Arthur Cochrane. In March 1863, Warrior escorted the royal yacht that brought Princess Alexandra of Denmark to Britain to marry the Prince of Wales. The princess appreciated the conduct of the ship's crew, and requested Admiral Sir Michael Seymour to convey that "she was much pleased" to the ship. Cochrane had the message engraved on a brass plate and fitted to the ship's wheel. Her descendant, Princess Alexandra of Kent, is now patron of the HMS Warrior 1860 Trust.
  In mid-1863 the Channel Fleet toured British ports for 12 weeks; the ship received 300,000 visitors, including as many as 13,000 a day in port. On 19 September, she rescued the survivors of the Mersey Flat Mary Agnes, which had sunk in a collision with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's ship Snaefell at Liverpool, Lancashire.
  Warrior began a refit in November 1864 during which the Armstrong guns, which had not proved successful in use, were removed and her armament was upgraded to the latest rifled muzzle-loading guns. She was recommissioned in 1867, under the command of Captain John Corbett, to relieve her sister as the guardship at Queenstown in Ireland, but instead both ships participated in the Fleet Review held on 17 July in honour of the visits made by the Khedive of Egypt and the Sultan of Turkey to Britain. After the review, the Admiralty paid off the ship on 24 July; the following day Warrior was recommissioned with Captain Henry Boys in command. After working up at Spithead, she sailed to join the Channel Squadron on 24 September. At the end of the year she was deployed to Osborne Bay to guard Queen Victoria at Osborne House. The Fenian Rising was under way, and there was intelligence suggesting that the Queen might be in danger from Irish nationalists. While Warrior was performing this duty, she received an informal visit from the Queen. The ship was part of a squadron that escorted the royal yacht HMY Victoria and Albert (1855) to Dublin in April 1868 for an official visit by the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. In August, while cruising to Scotland, Warrior collided with HMS Royal Oak, losing her figurehead and jib boom and smashing Royal Oak's cutter. Boys was court-martialled and acquitted over the incident.
  From 4 to 28 July 1868, Warrior, with Black Prince and the wooden paddle frigate HMS Terrible, towed a specially built floating drydock, large enough to accommodate ironclads, 2,700 nmi (5,000 km; 3,100 mi) across the Atlantic from Madeira to Bermuda. Upon her return to England in late August, Boys was relieved by Captain Frederick Stirling. After a refit to clean her hull and replace the figurehead lost in the collision, Warrior rejoined the Channel Squadron. On 2 March 1870, Captain Henry Glyn assumed command of the ship. While returning f
caption: Warrior's gun deck after restoration
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