HMS Captain (1869)
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HMS Captain was a major warship built for the Royal Navy as a semi-private venture, following a dispute between the designer and the Admiralty. With wrought-iron armour, steam propulsion, and the main
Lithograph of Captain at sea
The Lady Nancy raft was the inspiration of the Captain's design
Minute by Admiral Sir Frederick Grey (First Naval Lord) dated 21 April 1866, suggesting the Admiralty sanction Coles to build a seagoing turret-ship of his own design (from UK National Archives, ADM 1/5974)
Punch, or the London Charivari - political satire cartoon, dated 7 July 1866. The British press regarded the Admiralty as hidebound and prejudicial to Coles
HMS Monarch (1868)
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HMS Monarch was the first seagoing British warship to carry her guns in turrets, and the first British warship to carry guns of 12-inch calibre.
HMS Captain (1869)
…vessel that was overweight and ultimately unstable. In terms of seaworthiness she was reported as closely comparable to the higher freeboard turret-ship HMS Monarch, but her reduced freeboard added a sense of "sluggishness". The Captain capsized in heavy seas, only five months after being commissioned, with the…
Painting of HMS Monarch by William Frederick Mitchell
Diagrams showing location of gun turrets and armour protection, as depicted in Brassey's Naval Annual 1888
Monarch after her 1872 conversion to barque rig.
The dispersal of the International Fleet on 5 December 1880 convened for enforcing the Treaty of Berlin. The Graphic 1880