H.M.S. Agamemnon, 3,102 tons, was launched at Woolwich on 22 May 1852 and enjoyed the distinction of being the first screw-powered line-of-battle ship built for the Royal Navy. Measuring 230 feet in length, her 660 h.p. engine gave her a cruising speed of 11 knots and she was armed with 91 guns of various calibres. Commissioned with a crew of 850 men, she served with distinction in the Black Sea during the Crimean War as flagship to Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, earning the nickname "Lyon's brougham" for her handiness on so many operations. Her greatest achievement came in peacetime however when, in 1858, she laid the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable from Queenstown to Newfoundland having unsuccessfully attempted it the previous year. Sold out of the Service in 1870, she was broken up shortly afterwards.
H.M.S. Warrior, 6,019 tons, was built at Blackwall in 1859-60 and, when she entered service in 1861, rendered obsolete every other fighting ship in the world. The first iron-hulled armoured ship, she was a revolutionary vessel in many respects not least her massive firepower. Able to steam at 14 knots, her long and distinguished career - during which she never actually fired a shot in anger - reached its nadir when she bacame a floating oil jetty at Pembroke Dock in 1929. Miraculously saved from the scrapyard though largely forgotten, she was finally rescued from obscurity in 1979, magnificently restored and now lies at Portsmouth as a towering monument to the age she once dominated.