The Royal Albert hulk in the Hamoaze, 1890

H.M.S. Royal Albert, 121 guns, was designed along traditional lines by Oliver Lang, the Master Shipwright at Woolwich, and laid down in the yard there in March 1844. When begun, she was the largest ship-of-the-line ever intended for the Royal Navy but building was repeatedly halted and, in 1852, she was one of the vessels selected for conversion to screw propulsion. Fitted with 500nhp. engines, she was eventually launched on 13^th May 1854 having spent a full ten years on the stocks. At 3,726 tons, she was an enormous vessel and measured 232½ feet in length with a 61 foot beam. After her trials in November 1854, during which she made 10 knots under steam, she went straight to the Crimea where she acted as flagship to Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyon's Black Sea Fleet and saw considerable action during the course of the war with Russia. Nearly lost in December 1855 when she sprang a leak in her propeller bearing, her entire stern was so defective by 1861 that she was deemed unfit for further service, paid off and eventually sold for breaking in 1883. This view of her lying in the Hamoaze as a hulk post-dates her actual scrapping.