HMS Minotaur of 1868 under full power of sail and screw. To enlarge, click here.

Developing further from the Warrior model, Royal Navy architects created a series of ever-longer ironclad frigates, gradually increasing the size, horsepower, armament, and modern iron hull construction of their designs. These were some of the most imosing ships ever built. With a towering sailing rig to increase their range, the larger vessels spread the greatest area of canvas ever deployed on a British warship. Their haughty demeanor owed much to their beaked bows. Otherwise they were distinguished by two funnels and the presence of openwork bridges for command. A first for these ships was an armored conning tower placed aft between the 4th and 5th masts. While the ram determined the shape of the bow, another noteworthy change took place at the other end of the hull. It was made in response to a defect in the design of the Warrior: the lack of protection for rudder and screw. DNC Reed's solution was to adopt the bluff buttock lines which are well seen here, creating an overhanging stern without the vulnerable, hollow lines seen in the slimmer counter stern characteristic of clipper ships, yachts, and certain ocean liners. And at the bows, these ships curved outwards: they bore a large ram under the surface, like virtually all warships built between 1862 and 1910.

At right, the mighty Agincourt of 1868 fires a thunderous salute in a contemporary postcard (click here to enlarge). At this time, the British fielded a fleet in European waters that no rival could hope to match. Besides the Warrior and her sister, the Black Prince, the Royal Navy roster included six armored frigates of all-iron construction: Achilles, Agamemnon, Minotaur, Valiant, Agincourt, and Northumberland. The Minotaur,launched 1863, was the longest broadside ironclad ever constructed. She was meant to be Britain's "reply" to the French Magenta class battleships. She mounted the same number of guns on one deck as the iron-sheathed wooden French ships carried on two. Britain's broadside ironclads were masterfully constructed ships, and survived 30 or more years' service under the White Ensign before "being sold out of the service" -- a polite euphemism usually involving a trip to the shipbreakers.

Statistics for the 3-ship Minotaur class: Length: 407' Beam: 59'6" Draft: 27'9"; Displacement: 10,690 tons. Armament: (4) 9" MLR; (24) 7" MLR; (8) 24-pdr SB. Propulsion: 2-cyl. Penn Trunk engine, 6700 IHP, shafted to single screw. Speed: 14.8 kts.

HMS Northumberland of 1868, sister ship to Minotaur, made a capital subject for patriotic postcards and other ephemera -- great quality ephemera that have lasted, unexpectedly, down the dusty corridors of Time. This typical period "chromo" shows the ship under full sail and with the boilers also lit. The great length of these ships posed handling and power challenges to designers and to the naval officers entrusted with navigating them. The square rig was one part of these ships that was continually being revamped, from 3 to as many as 6 masts, with masts being moved about in an attempt to optimize performance under sail alone. However, all the reshuffling and re-rigging was in vain; these ships performed wretchedly under sail no matter what was tried. The practise of providing auxiliary sail reached a climax of cynicism a few years later when HMS Inflexible was completed with a full brig rig mainly to exercise the crew in seamanship: the vessel, with its two-foot-thick iron hull, was too heavy to actually move at any speed under sail alone. The sailing rig was removed from Inflexible within 3 years of her commissioning, to be replaced by military masts. Steam engines were gradually catching up to the challenge of propelling very heavy warships at battle speed; but the Inflexible of 1881 could only manage 14 knots on a good day. Lighter-weight steel hulls and triple-expansion engines, rolled out in the later 1880s, provided the solution for both these problems.

Despite their intent as modern mechanized killing machines, 1860s ironsclads retained some naval conventions that seem quaint to us, nearly a century after WWI shot conventional notions of honour into bits and introduced a new way of approaching things. Oak-paneled officer's quarters and chintz curtains -- decorative figureheads and cast-bronze scrollwork were still carried bow and stern as a nod to naval convention. To be sure, these indulgences were carried to more fanciful degrees in certain Continental navies than in the Royal Navy. But indulgences still occasionally erupted in decorative splendor recalling the exuberance of H.M. ships of war in former times. At right is the bow of HMS Minotaur of 1863, the Royal Navy's largest class of broadside ironclads derived from the Warrior. The only things missing were the lion and the unicorn. For a treatise on the survival of figureheads and decorative art into the industrial age, see our figureheads page.

One immediately obvious distinction of the broadside frigates of the 1860s from the Warrior class was the substition for a clipper bow of a outward-curving ram bow. For a discussion of the pluses and minuses of ram warfare in the age of iron and steam, see our discussion of ramming tactics and technology.
One of the logical outgrowths of the ram as a primary battle tactic, was the search for means of shooting straight ahead while making a ramming approach. This was manifestly impossible with the bulk of the ship's guns disposed in broadside fashion. Only a bow chaser mounted on one side or the other of the fo'c'sle head could accomplish this in a traditionally laid-out sailing ship, for one could not shoot through the headsails, vital to maneuvering the ship. Accordingly, the next step was to experiment with a bumped-out battery on the ship's beam, in the first emanations of what would be called the central battery ship. The creation of fore-and-aft cutouts to enable axial fire while minimizing blast damage to the ship, gave the central battery ship its characteristic tall, narrow form, with geometric cutouts and shapes in the hull form that broke dramatically with more curvilinear, sailing ship-based designs of the 1860s armored frigates seen here.