RN Ironclads

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Brian James
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Re: RN Ironclads:

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Ironclad Battleship HMS Temeraire pictured at Genoa c1880...She was built at Chatham Dockyard, on a slipway adjoining that on which HMS Alexandra, who would precede her into service by some seven months, was being built. She was designed at a time when the shortcomings of the traditional broadside battery - limited axial fire, low command, inactivity of half the guns in single-ship duels, heavy crew and difficulty in working the guns in seaway - were stimulating designers to develop improvements in artillery deployment...Her armament was partly conventional, being deployed on the broadside, and partly experimental; she was the first British ship to be equipped with guns in barbettes located on the midline on the upper deck. Indeed, she was the first British ship with barbettes of any kind. The foremost barbette was located ahead of the foremast, and had a field of fire ahead, extending to well abaft the beam on both sides. To achieve the same degree of freedom of fire from the after barbette the mizzen mast was deleted, and the after barbette placed aft of the mainmast. Temeraire and Alexandra were the only British battleships ever to carry guns of 11-inch calibre..The design of the barbettes was itself unique, being one of the few ships to have been equipped with 25 ton 11 inch disappearing guns. On firing, the recoil of the gun caused it to drop below deck level; this allowed re-loading without the exposure of the gun crew to aimed enemy fire. After loading, the gun was rotated by a hydraulic system back into the firing position. While this system was effective, it was slow and expensive and was never repeated. The suppression of the mizzen mast resulted in Temeraire being the largest ship ever to sail with brig rig, that is, with sail carried on only two masts. She was known during her life as 'The Great Brig'.
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Brian James
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Re: RN Ironclads:

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One of the two 25 ton 11 inch muzzle loading disappearing guns pictured on Ironclad Battleship HMS Temeraire in 1877.
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Brian James
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Re: RN Ironclads:

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A view of her quarterdeck, Colossus Class Ironclad Battleship HMS Edinburgh pictured at the Golden Jubilee Fleet Review of 1887..She was the first British Battleship since HMS Warrior, launched in 1860, to carry breech-loading artillery ( 4 × BL 12 inch MK IV and 5 x BL 6 inch guns) as part of her main armament. Warrior had been equipped with 10 110-pounder Armstrong breech-loading guns, which had not proved satisfactory, to complement her 26 muzzle-loaders.
Edinburgh's guns were carried in two turrets positioned near the centre of the ship, and the turrets were mounted en echelon. It was expected that, by mounting the turrets in this way, at least one gun from each turret could fire fore and aft along the keel line, and all four guns could fire on broadside bearings; it was intended that every part of the horizon could be covered by at least two guns. In practice it was found that firing too close to the keel line caused unacceptable blast damage to the superstructure, and cross-deck firing similarly caused damage to the deck.
Before Edinburgh the positioning of the conning tower in British Ironclads had produced a variety of solutions; the difficulty was that the two important factors involved, maximum protection and maximum visibility, were essentially mutually incompatible. In this ship the conning tower was positioned forward of the foremast for good all-round vision; the chart-house was, however, placed on its roof, and the whole area surrounded by small guns, stanchions and other obstructions to the view. The problem was not solved until the political will to build larger ships in turn allowed more space for command facilities. Her completion was delayed due to a lengthier than expected development time for her armament. An example of the Mark II 12-inch breech-loader exploded on board HMS Collingwood while on trial, and she had to wait, as did other ships, for the Mark IV. She was commissioned at Portsmouth in July 1887 and was then posted to the Mediterranean..In 1908 she was converted for use as a Target Ship, being fitted with fully backed and supported modern armour plates; the intention was to test and measure the effect on these plates of oblique impact by armour-piercing shells filled with lyddite, the most potent explosive of the period. As a result of these trials, which revealed major shortcomings in British high-explosive shells, the Controller, Jellicoe, ordered that the design of these shells should be improved. He was shortly thereafter appointed in command of the British Atlantic Fleet, and this instruction was not carried out. At the Battle of Jutland many British armour-piercing shells either did not pierce German armour, or did so but failed to explode, because of this failing. She was broken up by Thos W Ward in 1910.
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Brian James
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Colossus Class Ironclad Battleship HMS Edinburgh pictured in her role as Guard Ship at Queensferry, Scotland c1897.
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Brian James
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Ironclad Ram Battleship HMS Inflexible pictured c1887..She was built at Portsmouth Dockyard, launched in 1876 and commissioned on July 5th 1881.
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Brian James
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Y Turret barbette and BL 13.5 inch MK I guns pictured on Admiral Class Ironclad Battleship HMS Camperdown c1889.
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Brian James
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Ironclad Ram Ship HMS Hotspur pictured c 1879...Hotspur was designed to work with the Fleet, to bring into action her main weapon, her ram. This projected some ten feet ahead of her bow perpendicular, and was reinforced by an extension of the armoured belt...It was assumed that the bearings upon which a usual turret turned would not survive the shock of the impact consequent upon the use of the ram against an enemy ship. Her single 12-inch 25ton muzzle loading gun was therefore positioned in a fixed cupola perforated by four firing-ports through which the gun could be discharged. None of these ports allowed the gun to be fired straight ahead, where a potential ramming target would be situated. It was therefore only possible to engage these targets with the gun if the ramming attack missed.
As the maximum speed of Hotspur was less than virtually all of her potential targets, it quickly became apparent that ramming attacks on ships under way were almost guaranteed to miss, and she quickly descended from being a ship held to be of great military value to be the most useless member of the battle-fleet.
She was reconstructed by Laird & Sons Co at Birkenhead, Merseyside, and was given a revolving turret containing two 12-inch guns, new boilers and additional armour. Commissioned at Devonport in 1871. On January 26th, she collided with the steamship Lady Woodhouse off Plymouth. Both vessels were severely damaged. Hotspur was taken in to Plymouth for repairs. She remained in reserve until 1876. She served with HMS Rupert in the Sea of Marmara during the Russo-Turkish war of 1878. She then returned to Devonport, where she remained until her major reconstruction, undertaken by Laird & Sons Co. between 1881 and 1883. Her only active service thereafter was with the Particular Service Squadron of 1885. She was Guardship at Holyhead until 1893, was again in reserve until 1897, and was posted thereafter to serve as Guardship at Bermuda, where she stayed until sold for scrap in 1904.
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Brian James
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Re: RN Ironclads:

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Lead Ship, Second Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship HMS Colossus pictured on launch day, on the ways at Portsmouth Dockyard on March 21st 1882...She had a displacement of 9,520 tons, and an armament of 4 × 12-inch breechloaders, 5 × 6-inch guns and had a respectable speed of 15.5 knots.
She was one of the first, if not the first, modern Battleship. She had several features which would be standard for all gun warships up to the Second World War including all steel construction, a main battery of breech loading major caliber guns (ie. 10 inches or greater) mounted in turrets and was propelled only by steam engines instead of a combination of steam and sails - as was common in the mid-19th century.
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Brian James
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Admiral Class Ironclad Battleship HMS Benbow pictured c 1889.
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Brian James
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Lead Ship, Ironclad Battleship HMS Belleisle pictured c 1879..She was one of the four ships that were under construction for foreign navies in British Shipyards which were purchased by the British government for the Royal Navy in 1878, at the time of the Russian war scare.
She was one of the two Ironclads of the Belleisle Class, the other being HMS Orion. She was built at Samuda Brothers Shipyard at Cubitt Town, London, for service with the Ottoman Navy, under the name of Peik-i-Sheref, and was taken over for the RN in a completed condition. She was, however, not regarded as fit to serve as a British warship until a number of extensive and expensive modifications were carried out. She had been intended to carry 10-inch calibre guns, and the first recorded change is 'enlargement of ports to take 25-ton guns (i.e. guns of 12-inch calibre). Other major alterations included the building in of extra coal bunkers, the fitting of extra officers' cabins and the fitting of torpedo launching apparatus. The main artillery was mounted in a centrally placed octagonal box battery with two guns on each beam. The firing ports were so arranged that it was possible to fire two guns ahead, astern and on a limited bearing on either side. There were limited areas afore and abaft the beam where only one gun could be brought to bear; as the primary armament of this ship, as devised and designed, was her ram, this was regarded by her designer as an acceptable limitation.
Being smaller than other contemporary British Battleships, she and her sister HMS Orion had comparatively limited range, speed and armament. However they were initially welcomed by the naval press as being inexpensive, costing only half that of an Audacious-Class Battleship and a third of HMS Inflexible, but once her drawbacks became obvious they damned her in popular and naval opinion as a front-line fighting vessel. She was commissioned on July 2nd 1878, and served for the next fourteen years as Coastguard Ship at Kingstown, Ireland. Her only activity there was firing practice four times a year, the annual squadron cruise, and one refit at Devonport. In 1887 while stationed in Kingstown Harbour (now Dun Laoghaire). She paid off into the 'B' Reserve in April 1893, descending into the Fleet Reserve in May 1894. She was paid off in May 1900 and converted into a Target Ship. After surviving gunfire from HMS Majestic in which shells filled with lyddite were tested, she was towed back to Portsmouth. There, she was used to test the effect of guns of 6-inch and of 9.2 inch calibre, and of torpedoes. The torpedo experiments were expected to demonstrate the protective effect of cellulose against these weapons; the cellulose was expected to swell and plug the holes caused by the torpedoes. This did not happen, and Belleisle sank into the mud. She was raised with difficulty in October 1903 and sold for scrap to Germany.
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