Built to counter the latest French battleship, Warrior was, in her time, the ultimate deterrent. Yet by igniting a new era in naval technology, she soon became outdated. Painstakingly restored in Hartlepool and back home in Portsmouth since , Warrior is a unique survivor of the once formidable Victorian Black Battlefleet and now serves as a museum ship, visitor attraction, popular private hire venue and more.
Open all year round, the Captain and crew invite you to come onboard and explore this mighty Victorian battleship for yourself. Manpower was essential for the guns, the sails, capstans, ropes and the engine. HMS Warrior is the last of the 45 iron-hulled ships built between and Patroled British coastal waters and made voyages to Lisbon and Gibraltar.
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is open all year round from 10am every day. Number two was the Commander, who was responsible for the ship's day to day routines, fighting capability and general appearance.
He was also Wardroom Mess President. His quarters were next to the Captain's as were those of the Master. His title was a throwback to when merchant ships and their masters were commandeered for naval use. The Captain could only enter the wardroom by invitation of the other officers. The wardroom was their mess. It was on the lower deck, with their 14 cabins, 6 feet by 10 feet, arranged around a central dining and leisure area.
With the Royal Navy's new professional status some of the younger wardroom members would have graduated from the officer training school on Illustrious or later Britannia. The ship's chaplain was also the schoolmaster, teaching the ordinary crew and the junior ranks comprising 20 to 30 midshipmen and sub-lieutenants. These very young officers led a less formal life in the gunroom - their lower deck mess - where the chief gunner was in charge of the midshipmen.
They slept in hammocks. Also sharing the lower deck were the engineers, the boatswain, gunner, shipwright carpenter and chief petty officers, all of whom had cabins and messes. If you wanted to serve on board Warrior, you needed brawn rather than brain. The average sailor manned the guns, hoisted the sails, turned capstans, hauled on ropes, lifted and lowered boats, pulled on oars and cranked the massive pumps that moved water around the ship.
A large number of the crew helped raise the ship's four anchors located at the bow and stern. Each weighed 5. Over men hauled one anchor up at a time through linked capstans with its chain fed into cable lockers amidships to keep the ship balanced.
The crew slept in hammocks slung above the guns, and lived and ate in messes between the guns. The lot of the Jack Tar was improving. Press gangs had been abolished. Instead, seamen would be recruited for a fixed period and could then re - enlist or take a pension. Uniforms had been introduced in , the year before Warrior's launch. The dress depended on the job and the time of day or week. The normal outfits comprised dark blue jumpers and white trousers. All white outfits were worn for drills.
Stokers wore white suits of duck - a material similar to canvas, all the time and on Sundays, hats - black in winter and white in summer - were compulsory except in wet weather. Clothes were issued monthly from the Paymaster and the cost of the uniform deducted from the seaman's wages.
Hat ribbons were offered at a cost of 1 shilling each, a day's wages to a second class ordinary seaman. The Paymaster was a key figure on the ship. He controlled the victualling, clothes and pay from his lower deck office. Pay parade was monthly and formal. Off-watch seamen reported to the pay office and, at the command, a seaman took off his hat so that his wages could be put in it.
Wooden warships had attained their optimum length, their multiple gun decks making them unstable. Warrior's ingenious design incorporated just one long, very stable gun deck - feet longer than any previous warship. Her firepower could blow any other vessel out of the water. While wooden ships carried pounder guns, Warrior had pounders and pounders. She was the ultimate deterrent. Of the two types of heavy gun carried by Warrior the 68 pounder was most numerous, with twenty six on board.
This gun was designed in by Colonel Dundas, weighing 6 tons on its elm carriage. Although equipped with fitted sights, the trajectory was erratic. Due to the smooth bore nature of the gun effective range was limited to 2, yards. Complementing the 68 lb muzzle loading guns were ten pound guns. The Admiralty opted for these relatively untried breech loading guns, designed in by Tyneside engineer, William Armstrong and weighing 4. Again a gun crew of 18 men were required to discharge one round every 50 seconds.
One innovation was the barrel's rifling. This made the shot fly true and spin so that the tapered point hit the target first. This heralded the introduction of the percussion fuse, which detonated the shell on impact.
Another new feature was the loading method. The guns did not have to be drawn back into the ship; both projectile and charge were loaded through the breech screw and the chamber sealed with a block. Equipped with tangent elevated sights and a rifled bore, accuracy up to 4, yards was expected, making it far more efficient than any smooth bore gun in use at the time. The guns were not as impressive at sea as first hoped.
It proved impossible to create a gas tight seal between the block and breech, reducing the ability to fire rapidly and safely. The stokers and trimmers had the worst jobs so were paid 50 per cent more. They toiled in the stokehold in appalling conditions, shovelling tons of coal and ash by hand in temperatures of about degrees Fahrenheit 43 degree Centigrade. The air was thick with dust, and the noise was indescribable.
Another vital task was coaling up. This took place every few weeks when suitable port facilities were available. The job was dirty and complicated, and involved all the crew.
The gun deck was cleared with tables up, guns back and ports opened. Seamen and Marines filled two cwt kg wicker panniers aboard the collier berthed alongside. The panniers were hauled through the gunports, lifted over the deck and emptied down six chutes to stokers in the bunkers below. Two full days were needed to load tons of coal. The ship's resident 16 piece band played rousing melodies to keep the crew's morale up. Tons of dry coal blackened the gun deck to such an extent that it took a week to clean up afterwards.
Warrior Preservation Trust welcomes donations for the collection within the limits of our Acquisitions and Collections Development Policies. In broad terms, this involves items relating to Warrior and her sister ship Black Prince through all stages of their careers.
We cannot always accept material offered for the collection, for instance if it duplicates an item we already have. If we cannot accept an item, we may be able to recommend an alternative home. We are currently improving our archive facilities, which will be accessible and open to potential users in the near future. If you are looking to donate to the collection, please include digital photographs or scans of items where possible , or have any information you think may be of interest, please contact library nmrn.
Please allow at least one month for a response. For any other enquiry, please contact library nmrn. Enquiries are dealt with free of charge but donations towards supporting our work are appreciated.
Warrior Preservation Trust is collecting information relating to the crew of HMS Warrior across all her service periods and subsequent namesakes, but particularly so for her first commission from — We would love to hear from you if you have service records, diaries, logbooks, photographs, paintings - in fact, any record or material that relates to your relative and the ship or her namesakes.
If you have something that may be of interest, please include digital photographs or scans of items where possible, and contact library nmrn. Warrior Preservation Trust does not hold official service records within our collections. For advice about what these are, what they contain and where full service records can be obtained, please look at the National Archives Guides and Resources. If you are looking to make a research appointment, we require a minimum of two weeks' notice in advance of an intended visit.
Preferred appointment times cannot be guaranteed and general Museum admission may be charged. You must have a confirmed appointment in order to visit our archive. For any other enquiries, or if you are looking to donate to the collection, please include digital photographs or scans of items where possible , please contact archive hmswarrior.
Please allow at least one month for a response to your enquiry. Jump to Navigation. Search form Search. History of HMS Warrior. The Admiralty had, however, grown complacent about Britain's command of the seas. Building As Warrior's sleek profile rose slowly from the building slip like some huge iron curtain the crowds gathered eagerly, fascinated by the ironclad's progress. In May of her fore and main masts were found to be rotten, and not considered worth the cost of repair, Warrior was placed in the reserve, eventually converted to a floating school for the Navy and re-named Vernon III in Put up for sale as scrap in , no buyer could be found, and so, in March she left Portsmouth to be taken to Pembroke Dock and converted into a floating oil pontoon, re-named again as Oil Fuel Hulk C By , she was the only surviving example of the 'Black Battlefleet' - the 45 iron hulls built for the Royal Navy between and Email: enquiries historicdockyard.
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