C.S.S. Mississippi (1863) -
Commissioned as H.M.S. Wivern
The Wivern and her sister Scorpion were built for the Confederacy by Laird's shipyard in Birkenhead (in Merseyside, near Liverpool) and would have completed near the end of 1863. These two oceangoing ironclads -- known in Britain as the "Laird rams" -- carried a pair of 9" muzzle-loading guns in each of two Coles turrets. The turrets were mounted in the waist of the ship, before and aft of the mainmast. The ships also carried huge spur rams (see diagram below). As with many Civil War era warships, hinged bulwarks folded down to permit the guns to train, or locked up when hurtling over the brine. Originally these ironclads were to have been called CSS Mississippi and CSS North Carolina, but they never sailed under those names.
These two ironclads could have spelled serious trouble for the Union Navy, since they outmatched all but New Ironsides in the Union fleet. They were already fitting out (under the fictitious guise of ironclads for Turkey) when Union diplomats engaged in the hardest round of American arm-twisting until the lead-up to the Iraq War at the U.N. H.M. government siezed the two vessels in 1863 and purchased them for the Royal Navy in 1865. Below, the Mississippi and her sister quarantined at Liverpool, under guard of the ship-of-the-line HMS Majestic (astern). Their loss was a body blow to the Confederacy.
Renamed Wivern and Scorpion for their Royal Navy service, the two were of a type which was known as "Masted Turret Ships." This photo of Wivern shows her during her British service in the 1860s, with "tripod masts," their rigging simplified by using wooden struts from the first mast step to the deck instead of a web of hemp shrouds (traditional shrouds are seen in the plan below). The intent, obviously, was to widen the arc of fire for the guns by reducing the rigging they had to aim through.
These two accidental acquisitions proved high-quality, economical additions to the Queen's fleet. They roved the globe in a variety of duties in the 1860s. Laid up in ordinary for part of the 1870s, Wivern was refitted and sent to Hong Kong in 1880. There she remained until she was scrapped in 1922.
Specifications for the Mississippi / Wivern: 224'6" long x 42'4" beam. Draft: 17' deep laden. Displacement: 2,750 tons. Armament: (4) 9" MLR. Armor: Belt 4.5 inches,tapering to 3" bow and 2" stern. Turret faces 10 inches, sides 5 inches. Engines: Lairds' Direct Acting, 1450 IHP, single screw. Maximum speed under power: 10.5 kts. Rig: Barque rig, changed to fore-and-aft with square foretopsail (topsail schooner), late 1870s. Crew: 153.