Whilst Tamar was an ageing troopship, H.M.S. Trafalgar was one of the products of the technological upheavals which coursed through Victorain era. Built at Portsmouth and completed in March 1890 at a final cost of £850,000, she was a distictive vessel with her two funnels placed side by side amidships instead of one abaft the other. Heavily armoured and carrying four massive 13½in. 67-ton guns, she spent all her seagoing career as flagship to the Mediterranean Fleet but was gradually downgrades after 1897 and finally broken up in 1911.
Lieut. S.E. Deacon joined the Royal Navy as a Cadet in 1889 and retired in 1902.