Tuesday, 22 December 2009

ABC Wednesday W is for Warrior




figurehead

HMS Warrior

cannon
All images © Rémi Jouan, CC-BY-SA, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons
HMS Warrior was the pride of Queen Victoria's fleet and was the first iron-clad warship to be built. When she was launched in 1860 by Queen Victoria she was the largest, fastest and most powerful ship of her day. It took 35 months to build her and she was powered by steam and sail. She is the only surviving ship of her kind in the world and revolutionised naval architecture. However, the pace of technological development was so great that within ten years she was obsolete.
For the next century she was used as a depot ship, a storage hulk and then became part of the Royal Navy Torpedo Training School at Portsmouth. Following that she was used as an oil jetty in Milford Haven before being rescued and towed to Hartlepool where work began on restoring her.

Now she is berthed in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard where she is a popular tourist attraction. She is a stunning, sleekly built, strikingly impressive warship. The Warrior Preservation Trust's remit has been to restore her as far as possible to her original condition. A tour around Warrior shows visitors how Victorian sailors lived on board.
Thank you to Denise Nesbitt for organising and hosting this meme.
To see what others have been finding for 'W' please click here.

17 comments:

  1. What beautiful old ships! Great post for the W day! Would love to be able to tour one!

    Have a great week and wishing you a very Happy Holiday weekend!

    Sylvia

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  2. I couldn't enlarge these photos, but the Warrior looks impressive in the second shot. Interesting historical information.

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  3. I found your post very interesting Janice. I love old ships. What a varied life this one has had and thank goodness she has been saved for everyone to enjoy.

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  4. Thanks for this short history tour.

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  5. Oh, I like that! Fascinating ship!

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  6. Looks nice but I bet they're more impressive when seen larger.

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  7. A wonderful ship! I love the figurehead on it, and I'm glad that it has been preserved. Thanks for sharing!

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  8. Nice shots and a great choice for the letter W. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

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  9. I think I'm glad I wasn't a sailor in those days.

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  10. Hi Janice! I love those old nineteenth century ships! I remember that more than thirty years ago we saw one of those old ships in Bristol. It was being restored and we took a lot of photos. May be it's still there.

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  11. She's had a very interesting life.

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  12. Wonderful! How is the weather with you down there? Very cold up here but from my armchair, with Freida next to me, and central heating on, I can deal with it!
    Merry Christmas
    Dxx

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  13. Your pictures are so tiny that I can't really see her very well (and don't enlarge on clicking), but she does look gorgeous! I must get down to Portsmouth one day to see the ships in that dockyard.

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  14. Thank you one and all! I'm sorry about the photographs - I didn't realise how small they were and that they wouldn't enlarge - probably I failed to do something before copying them from Wikimedia Commons *blush*. You might see them better if you are able to enlarge the view % on your pc screen.
    Reader Wil - I think it was probably the SS Great Britain that you saw in Bristol. She was the first ocean-going propeller-driven iron ship and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built in Bristol.
    mrsnesbitt - it's still icy here but I doubt it's as cold as where you are; we just make more fuss in the soft South!! ;-)

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  15. Yes Janice, it was the SS Great Britain indeed, built by Brunel! A beautiful ship!

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  16. Certainly a vessel built to last, sailing ships are so beautiful.

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  17. What an interesting post. Thank you! Merry Christmas!

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