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Further Reading

HMS Duke of Wellington

HMS Duke of Wellington and her three sister ships were major British warships of the mid-19th century. They epitomized the era of rapid technological change in the Royal Navy, powered both by sail and steam. HMS Duke of Wellington was the first of a class of four that represented the ultimate development of the wooden three-decker ship of the line which had been the mainstay capital ship in naval warfare for 200 years.

HMS Duke of Wellington was originally ordered in 1841 to a design of Sir William Symonds, the Surveyor of the Navy, but was not laid down until May 1849 at Pembroke Dock, by which time Symonds had resigned and the design had been modified by the Assistant Surveyor John Eyde. At this stage the ship, first christened HMS Windsor Castle, was still intended as a sailing vessel. Although the Royal Navy had been using steam power in smaller ships for three decades, it had not been adopted for ships of the line, partly because the enormous paddle-boxes required would have meant a severe reduction in the number of guns carried. This problem was solved by the adoption of the screw propellor in the 1840s.

Under a crash program announced in December 1851 to provide the Navy with a steam-driven battlefleet, the design was further modified by the new Surveyor, Captain Baldwin Walker. The ship was cut apart in two places on the stocks in January 1852, lengthened by 30 feet (9.1 m) overall and given screw propulsion. She received the 780 hp engines designed and built by Robert Napier for the iron frigate Simoon, which had surrendered them on conversion to a troopship. The ship was launched on 14 September 1852. On that day the Duke of Wellington died at Walmer, and she was subsequently re-named in honor of the Iron Duke and provided with a new figurehead in the image of the duke.

Throughout the 1850s, Pembroke Dockyard produced the last of the Royal Navy's great wooden line of battleships and played a pioneering role in the development of early steam propulsion. 'HMS Duke of Wellington' and other big wooden liners of the decade were converted while building to carry steam, being 'cut asunder' on the slips and lengthened to make room for boilers and engines.

When completed early in 1853 HMS Duke of Wellington was, on paper at least, the most powerful warship in the world and the largest yet built for the Royal Navy, twice the displacement of Nelson's Victory and with a far bigger broadside. She was 240 feet (73.1 m) long, displaced 5,892 tons, and carried 131 cannon, weighing a total of 382 tons and mainly firing 32 lb balls.

After service in the Western Squadron of the Channel Fleet, she was designated the flagship of the fleet that Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Napier was to lead to the Baltic on the outbreak of the war with Russia (later known as the Crimean War). HMS Duke of Wellington served as his flagship throughout the Baltic campaign of 1854 and returned to the Baltic the following year as the flagship of Napier's successor in the command, Rear-Admiral Richard Saunders Dundas.

Under trials on 11 April 1853 she had made 10.15 knots under steam and she proved a magnificent sailing ship, but the second-hand engines turned out distinctly unsatisfactory and the hurried conversion had compromised her structural strength; she thus saw no active service after the Crimean War. She served as a receiving ship at Portsmouth, where she became a familiar and much-photographed sight, always described on postcards as "the flagship of Sir Charles Napier". Relegated to harbour service as one of the depot ships for berthing the men of the Portsmouth Dockyard Reserve, and shorn of her towering masts and trim square-set yards she looked very different from her appearance in the latter half of the 19th century. She served as flagship for the Commander-in-Chief for Queen Victoria's birthday celebration at Portsmouth in 1896 "dressed smartly for the occasion". She was broken up in 1902.

She was a three-decker screw ship of the line, she had towering masts and trim square-set yards. As with her sister-ships she was the product of an obsolete conception of naval firepower. With the recent improvements in accuracy and reliability of British naval guns there was no longer a need for ships to mount enormous numbers of cannon but it would take a further decade for this to be fully appreciated.

Of her three sisters, all received more powerful machinery specially designed for them.

HMS Marlborough was completed to a modified design and served as flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet from 1858-64; thereafter she too was a receiving ship at Portsmouth, renamed Vernon II, surviving until broken up in 1924. This Marlborough, the fourth ship bearing this name, was laid down in 1850 as a sailing three-decker of 110 guns; while on the stocks she was altered to a screw ship, which involved lengthening her, and this enabled her armament to be increased to 131 guns. She is constructed to carry 131 guns, the majority of which are 32 pounders; and one upon the forecastle, ten feet long and weighing 95cwt, is to throw shot of 68 pounds. She was thus, when completed one of the largest wooden ships of war ever built. At that time she was the largest vessel in the British navy. She was launched on August 7th, 1855 by Queen Victoria at Portsmouth. The Illustrated Times wrote a long article in which was written "It would be difficult in words to convey an idea of the appearance of a vessel of this size. A vessel, whose sides as we walk along them, seem as long as a moderate-sized street, and whose height, as we look up to her, appears considerably to surpass that of an ordinary house; a vessel which is fitted up inside for the accommodation of a number of men equal to the population of a good-sized town."

HMS Prince of Wales was completed to the same design as Marlborough in 1860 but saw no sea service. HMS Prince of Wales was a Royal Navy 121-gun screw-propelled first-rate ship of the line launched on January 25 1860. The advent of ironclads had made her obsolete before launch, so she was placed in reserve and never fitted for sea. In 1869 she was renamed Britannia and began service as a stationary officer cadet training ship at Dartmouth, replacing the previous Britannia in that role. She was hulked in September 1909, sold in September 1914, and broken up at Blyth in July 1916.

HMS Royal Sovereign was laid down as a 121-gun first-rate wooden line-of-battle ship to the same design as the Duke of Wellington, but was selected when near completion for conversion to an experimental turret ship. Her conversion was undertaken under the instigation of Captain Cowper Coles, who believed that a mastless ship armed with turret-mounted artillery would represent the best possible design for a coast-defence ship, which Royal Sovereign was meant to be. She was the first British turret-armed battleship, and the only one with a wooden hull. HMS Royal Sovereign was cut down to the lower deck and converted in 1862-4 into the first British turret ship. She was fitted with four turrets mounting 9 inch muzzle-loading rifled guns. She was regarded as primarily experimental and her longest voyage was to Cherbourg in 1865 before becoming the tender to the gunnery school HMS Excellent. She was scrapped in 1885.

The Royal Navy constructed the first naval barracks in Devonport, near Plymouth, in 1890. It was 13 years until Portsmouth opened its own barracks. The new buildings were constructed on the site of old Army barracks and other former military buildings. Previously, five hulks - old ships no longer in service - provided accommodation for sailors in the dockyard. These were -

HMS Victory – Signal School and Receiving ship for Boys First Class.

HMS Duke of Wellington – Receiving ship for Stokers, Seamen, Artisan Ratings (ship’s company) and domestics.

HMS Marlborough – Wardroom and gun room officers and Stokers Second Class.

HMS Hannibal – Marines, New Entries and all other Artisan Entries.

HMS Asia – Warrant Officers, Engine Room Artificers, Chief Stokers and Chief Carpenters’ Mates.

Builders began construction work for the new barracks in October 1899 keeping only elements of the old buildings. The Admiralty opened the establishment on 30 September 1903.