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Lot Essay
H.M.S. Royal Albert, 121 guns, was designed by Oliver Lang, the Master Shipwright at Woolwich, and laid down there in March 1844. When begun, she was the largest ship-of-the-line then planned but building was repeatedly halted and, in 1852, she was one of the vessels selected for conversion to screw propulsion. Fitted with 500 h.p. engines, she was eventually launched on 13th May, 1854 having spent a full ten years on the stocks. At 3,726 tons, she was an enormous vessel and measured 232¾ 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 Lyons' Black Sea Fleet and saw considerable action during the course of the war. Nearly lost in December 1855 (see above) when she sprang a leak in her propellor bearing, her entire stern was so defective by 1861 that she was deemed unfit for further service, paid off and eventually broken up in 1884.