No wonder Napoleon 111 called her "the black snake among the rabbits." Four-and-a-half inch armor, hung on rhe flanks of a traditionally shaped hull make rhe W arri or an incredibly dangerous weapon. She could kill with virrual impuniry and steam through one of rhe wooden fleets of her day leaving kindling in her wake. Her huge engines, driving a 23 !Ii fo ol wheel lo produce 14 !12 knots, are specially designed to hunch down below the waterline immune lo shellfire. 'Courtesy, South Street Seaport Museum.
for a further four years. In 1869 both ships, in tandem, took part in the tow of a big floating dock to Bermuda, the biggest such operation undertaken up to that time. In 1872, she paid off for a further refit and, in 1875, became the guard ship of the Portland coastal district. In 1881 , she went to the Clyde as RNR drill ship and, in 1884, went into the Fleet Reserve. The Warrior remained in reserve until 1900 when she was dismantled and moored at Portsmouth as part of the torpedo school, HMS Vernon. Her she stayed until 1928 when she was towed to Pembroke Dock to serve for the next 51 years as a floating pontoon attached to the Llanion oil fuel depot. Her sister ship had already gone to the breakers in 1923. The Pax Britannica The Warrior's career contained no glorious episodes but she fulfilled her purpose. How real the French threat was which precipitated her building no-one can say, but four French ironclads were built and many more programmed before Britain had a single one. The arrival of the Warrior, vastly superior to her opponents, put the French smartly back in their place. The Pax Britannica was maintained or, in modern terminology, the deterrent had worked . There was no war so the Warrior was never in action. The rapid advance of nineteenth cen14
tury technology left the Warrior design behind but she can truthfully claim to be the most important and influential warship built in the nineteenth century. She set utterly new standards in size, strength, speed and gun power, which became the reference point for all future construction. When she was launched, her designer remarked that her hull would last for a hundred years and so it has: for 120. At Pembroke Dock she was dry-docked every five years or so and her bottom coated with hot bitumen. Her masts, engines, guns and propellor have long gone, and the only equipment now on board is two Bellville boilers probably fitted in 1904. However, the state of her structure has always been the real surprise. Wrought iron is little affected by sea water, and corrosion over the 120 years of her life has only been slight. Some of the armour plates are as smooth as the day they were put on . The last thicknesstesting of her hull, in 1964, indicated little reduction in the original 1860 scantlings. New Life For The Old Ship In 1967, Mr. Frank Carr, of Cutty Sark fame, developed a plan to restore the Warrior and berth her at Thamesmead . In the event, the plan was ruled out by expense and other factors. When The Maritime Trust was formed in 1969, the Warrior was again studied, but the newly-formed
Trust had plenty to cut its teeth on without tackling a project of this size and, anyway, the Ministry of Defence still needed her. In 1977, the Ministry announced that they would release her in 1978, free of charge, to a good home. The Maritime Trust and the London Borough of Newham , which embraces the site of the Bow Creek building yard, made submissions to the Ministry and, after lengthy deliberations, she was awarded to the Trust. On 29 August, she left Milford Haven for the last time in tow of the Alexandra Towing Company's tug Hendon, bound for Hartlepool. The condition of the hull was so good that she obtained a towage certificate without dry docking. However, divers scrubbed off the considerable animal and vegetable growth which had accumulated since her last docking in 1974. She arrived at Hartlepool on 3rd September after an uneventful tow and was placed in a berth specially dredged for her by Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons, in the old coal dock. Here The Maritime Trust intends to reconstruct the Warrior. Before tackling the reconstruction of a large mid-nineteenth century ship, there are many factors to be considered. Perhaps the most important is finance . It is obvious that The Maritime Trust would not have gone ahead without an assurance of financial backing. This has been proSEA HISTORY, WINTER 1980