Designed & built to challenge an aggressive French shipbuilding programme in the late 1850s when commissioned the 40-gun steam-powered ironclad HMS Warrior was the largest warship in the world The revolutionary design housed the main guns 10 boilers & steam engine inside an impregnable armoured 'box' or citadel made from 412in thick wrought iron plates Warrior is the only surviving example of Britain's ' Black Battlefleet'
- the 45 iron hulls built for the Royal Navy between 1861 & 1877 She was restored in the 1980s & is now on public display at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard