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.
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