.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Ordered in response to French experiments with ironclad warships, H.M.S. Warrior was launched on 29th December 1860 and completed in the summer of 1861. The first ocean-going iron-hulled warship and also the largest capital ship of her day, her completion rendered most of the world's battlefleets obsolete overnight and signalled a profound change in sea warfare thereafter. Heavily armed although carrying a full ship rig to conserve coal when cruising, her potential and reputation as a deterrent lived on long after she herself was superseded and she survived several attempts to scrap her during an exceptionally long life. Finally decommissioned in 1900, she became first a hulk and then a floating oil jetty but stubbornly refused to rust away until rescued for preservation in 1979. Superbly restored as the world's only remaining ironclad, she is now permanently moored at Portsmouth, the sole survivor of a vanished breed of ship that shaped naval history in the mid-nineteenth century.