1st British seagoing ironclad warship, is launched.

[Asid]

The first British seagoing ironclad warship, HMS Warrior is launched.

December 29 1860



Name: HMS Warrior
Ordered: 11 May 1859
Builder: Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, Blackwall, London
Cost: £377,292
Laid down: About August 1859
Launched: 29 December 1860
Commissioned: 1 August 1861
Decommissioned: 31 May 1883
Renamed: Vernon III, March 1904


HMS Warrior was a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy in 1859–61. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Along with her sister ship HMS Black Prince Warrior was 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" – that is, 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.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_%281860%29