This cross-section of the Warrior shows her Penn trunk engine, Downton pumps and, on the main deck, a /OOpdr (left) and a 68pdr (right). Her 4 1/2in armor, backed by I Sin teak, extended five f eet below the waterlin e. Drawn by Asst. Eng . William Milin , RN, in 1861. Above, the restored ship' s galley . Below, a caulker at work near the foremast and unfinished fife rails. Bottom , seen through the mainlop are the mainmast (40in diameter) and, in the lowered position, the topmast (22in diameter).
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designers that the iron-hulled armored ship would supersede the wooden ship without losing its solid qualities of seakeeping and endurance . Although experimental , Warrior was also conventional and beautiful , an achievement without radical departure from contemporary warships. In contrast to the awful monstrosities , both British and foreign , of later years which resembled ships only in that they floated , Warrior was the last vessel built for the Royal Navy to exemplify the graceful lines of the old sailing frigates . Throughout the first commission, spent largely in home waters with the Channel Squadron , Warrior was commanded by Captain The Hon. Arthur Cochrane , son of the famous Earl of Dundonald whose exploits rivalled those of Nelson. Her commander, George Tyron , would have reached the top but for a disastrous collision when commanding the Mediterranean fleet in 1893. Lieutenant John A. Fisher was appointed her gunnery officer and soon brought the gun battery to the peak of efficiency. (He was later to win undying fame as the First Sea Lord who introduced the Dreadnought battleship and brought the Royal Navy to a peak of fighting efficiency on the eve of World War I.) All in all, the first commission was happy and successful , especially when Warrior was selected to escort HRH Princess Alexandra of Denmark in the royal yacht across the Channel en route to be married to the Prince of Wales , later King Edward VII. After a Portsmouth refit and rearm , her second commission , al so in the Channel squadron , was unspectacular apart from towing a floating dock to Bermuda with her sistership Black Prince. By 1870, the deterrent effect of the Royal Navy ' s ironclads put an end to the French challenge . There was no war , and Warrior was never in action. Relegated to Coast Guard and Reserve duty , Warrior lay at buoys in Portland Roads and Greenock before removal from the active list in 1883. In 1904 she was hulked and renamed HMS Vernon to form part of the torpedo school at Portsmouth . She remained in that service until 1924 when the school moved ashore , and in 1929 the Admiralty had her towed to Llannion Fuel Depot near Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven, to become a floating jetty. Sailors of many smal 1 warships of all nations can remember berthing alongside Warrior during World War II as she lay at her leafy river mooring , manned by a solitary sh ipkeeper fishing for mullet out of the stern gallery. In the 1960s, Frank Carr, Chairman of the World Ship Trust, was foremost amongst those who realized Warrior' s great significance. When the Navy indicated that they had no further use for her, he was instrumental in having her turned over to Admiral Sir Patrick Bayly , Director of the newly formed SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1987