Warrier at dusk

We've had a lovely day in Portsmouth and I would have blipped the Victory but she's mastless at the moment so the Warrier makes a better picture.

Warrior was designed and built in response to an aggressive French shipbuilding programme which saw the introduction of the first iron-clad warship La Gloire.

When commissioned by Captain the Hon. Arthur Auckland Leopold Pedro Cochrane ( they don't make names like that anymore! ), on August 1st 1861, Warrior was the largest warship in the world, at 9,210 tons displacement she was fully 60% larger than La Gloire.

Having introduced a revolution in naval architecture, by 1864 Warrior was superseded by faster designs, with bigger guns and thicker armour. By 1871 she was no longer regarded as the crack ship she had once been, and her roles were downgraded to Coastguard and reserve services. In May of 1883 her fore and main masts were found to be rotten, and not considered worth the cost of repair, Warrior was placed in the reserve, eventually converted to a floating school for the Navy and re-named Vernon III in 1904.

Put up for sale as scrap in 1924, no buyer could be found, and so, in March 1929 she left Portsmouth to be taken to Pembroke Dock and converted into a floating oil pontoon, re-named again as Oil Fuel Hulk C77. By 1978, she was the only surviving example of the 'Black Battlefleet' - the 45 iron hulls built for the Royal Navy between 1861 and 1877.

She was then saved and towed to Hartlepool to be restored to her original condition at a cost of more than £8 million - the most complex and costly restoration attempted until the Marie Rose ( which will come in at around £20.5 million and be opening next year ).