HMS ''Prince Albert'' was designed and built as a shallow-draught coast-defence ship, and was the first British warship designed to carry her main armament in turrets.
[The first completed turret ship was HMS ''Royal Sovereign'', converted from a ship-of-a-line and commissioned in 1864.] The ship was named after
Prince Albert, the late husband of
Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previo ...
. At her wish, ''Prince Albert'' remained on the "active" list until 1899, a total of 33 years, by which time she had long ceased to be of any military value.
Design
The
Board of Admiralty, in coming to decisions on the structure and dimensions of this ship, were faced with conflicting demands for stability, armour, gun-power, rig, speed and range. Captain
Cowper Coles, a long-time advocate of turret-mounted armament, had produced a proposal in 1859 which, while not being accepted as produced, formed the basis for the design concept of ''Prince Albert''.
Freeboard was fixed at to ensure adequate stability, while affording the armament a command at least comparable to that obtained in contemporary
broadside ironclad
An ironclad is a steam-propelled warship protected by iron or steel armor plates, constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. Th ...
s. The armament was disposed in four armoured turrets, each containing one heavy gun and each on the centre-line. The guns carried were the heaviest and most powerful available at the time, the calibre
muzzle-loading rifle A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm or artillery piece that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore. The term " rifled muzzle loader" typically is used to describe a type of artillery piece, although it is technically accurate ...
. The absence of a poop and
forecastle
The forecastle ( ; contracted as fo'c'sle or fo'c's'le) is the upper deck of a sailing ship forward of the foremast, or, historically, the forward part of a ship with the sailors' living quarters. Related to the latter meaning is the phrase " be ...
limited the activity of the ship in rough weather, but allowed end-on fire over the bow and stern from the end turrets.
Unlike the turrets in the contemporary American
monitors
Monitor or monitor may refer to:
Places
* Monitor, Alberta
* Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States
* Monitor, Kentucky
* Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States
* Monitor, Washington
* Monitor, Logan County, West Vir ...
, the turrets were rotated by hand; eighteen men could turn a turret through 360 degrees in about a minute.
Service history
''Prince Albert'' was commissioned at Portsmouth and was almost immediately withdrawn from service for trials and alterations, which lasted until 1867. She passed thereafter into the first division, Devonport Reserve. She formed part of the
Particular Service Squadron formed in August 1878, after which she remained in reserve. She was re-commissioned for the
Jubilee Review in 1887 and took part in naval manoeuvres in 1889. ''Prince Albert'' was relegated to Dockyard Reserve in 1898.
Notes
References
* Oscar Parkes ''British Battleships''
* Conway ''All the World's Fighting Ships''
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prince Albert
Battleships of the Royal Navy
Ships built in Cubitt Town
1864 ships
Victorian-era battleships of the United Kingdom