An ironclad was a steam-propelled warship protected by steel or iron armor 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. The first ironclad battleship, Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in November 1859, narrowly preempting the British Royal Navy. However, Britain built the first completely iron-hulled warships.
A rifled breech loader (RBL) is an artillery piece which, unlike the smoothbore cannon and rifled muzzle loader which preceded it, has rifling in the barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun.
HMS Thunderer was one of two Devastation-class ironclad turret ships built for the Royal Navy in the 1870s. She suffered two serious accidents before the decade was out and gained a reputation as an unlucky ship for several years afterward. The ship was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1878 and was reduced to reserve in 1881 before being recommissioned in 1885. Thunderer returned home in 1887 and was again placed in reserve. She rejoined the Mediterranean Fleet in 1891, but was forced to return to the UK by boiler problems the following year. The ship became a coast guard ship in Wales in 1895 and was again placed in reserve in 1900. Thunderer was taken out of service in 1907 and sold for scrap in 1909.
Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for more specialized roles in surface warfare such as naval gunfire support (NGFS) and anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) engagements. The term generally refers to powder-launched projectile-firing weapons and excludes self-propelled projectiles such as torpedoes, rockets, and missiles and those simply dropped overboard such as depth charges and naval mines.
This article explains terms used for the British Armed Forces' ordnance (weapons) and ammunition. The terms may have different meanings depending on its usage in another country's military.
The Defence-class ironclads were a class of two warships built for the Royal Navy between 1859 and 1862. The ships were designed as armoured frigates in response to an invasion scare sparked by the launch of the French ironclad Gloire and her three sisters in 1858. They were initially armed with a mix of rifled breech-loading and muzzle-loading smoothbore guns, but the Armstrong breech-loading guns proved unreliable and were withdrawn from service after a few years.
The Armstrong RBL 7-inch gun, also known as the 110-pounder, was a heavy caliber Armstrong gun, an early type of rifled breechloader.
A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore, and is loaded from the muzzle of the barrel rather than the breech. Historically they were developed when rifled barrels were introduced by the 1740ies, which offered higher accuracy than the earlier smoothbores. The American longrifle evolved from the German "Jäger" rifle; a popularly recognizable form of the "muzzleloader" was the Kentucky Rifle. Although by definition they must be reloaded after each shot in a time-consuming fashion, they are still produced for hunting.
An Armstrong gun was a uniquely designed type of rifled breech-loading field and heavy gun designed by Sir William Armstrong and manufactured in England beginning in 1855 by the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. Such guns involved a built-up gun construction system of a wrought-iron tube surrounded by a number of wrought-iron strengthening coils shrunk over the inner tube to keep it under compression.
The Colossus-class battleships were British ironclad warships, carrying their main armament in turrets, which served in the Victorian Royal Navy from 1882. They were the first British warships to carry large rifled breech-loading main guns.
A quick-firing or rapid-firing gun is an artillery piece, typically a gun or howitzer, that has several characteristics which taken together mean the weapon can fire at a fast rate. Quick-firing was introduced worldwide in the 1880s and 1890s and had a marked impact on war both on land and at sea.
The Armstrong Breech Loading 12 pounder 8 cwt, later known as RBL 12 pounder 8 cwt, was an early modern 3-inch rifled breech-loading field gun of 1859.
The BL 12 inch naval gun Mk I was a British rifled breech-loading naval gun of the early 1880s intended for the largest warships such as battleships and also coastal defence. It was Britain's first attempt to match the large guns being installed in rival European navies, particularly France, after Britain transitioned from rifled muzzle-loading guns to the modern rifled breech-loaders somewhat later than the European powers.
The BL 12-inch Mark VIII naval gun was one of the first large British rifled breech-loading naval guns designed for the higher pressures generated by the new cordite propellant of the 1890s, and Britain's first large wire-wound gun. It represented a major advance compared to previous British guns.
The BL 6-inch gun Marks II, III, IV and VI were the second and subsequent generations of British 6-inch rifled breechloading naval guns, designed by the Royal Gun Factory in the 1880s following the first 6-inch breechloader, the relatively unsuccessful BL 6-inch 80-pounder gun designed by Elswick Ordnance. They were originally designed to use the old gunpowder propellants but from the mid-1890s onwards were adapted to use the new cordite propellant. They were superseded on new warships by the QF 6-inch gun from 1891.
The BL 10 inch guns Mks I, II, III, IV were British rifled breechloading 32-calibre naval and coast defence guns in service from 1885.
RML 16-inch 80-ton guns were large rifled muzzle-loading guns intended to give the largest British battleships parity with the large guns being mounted by Italian and French ships in the Mediterranean Sea in the 1870s.
HMS Rapid was an 11-gun Rosario-class wooden-hulled screw-driven sloop of the Royal Navy, launched on 29 November 1860 at Deptford Dockyard and broken up in 1881.
The 68-pounder cannon was an artillery piece designed and used by the British Armed Forces in the mid-19th century. The cannon was a smoothbore muzzle-loading gun manufactured in several weights firing projectiles of 68 lb (31 kg). Colonel William Dundas designed the 112 cwt version in 1841 which was cast the following year. The most common variant, weighing 95 long cwt (4,800 kg), dates from 1846. It entered service with the Royal Artillery and the Royal Navy and saw active service with both arms during the Crimean War. Over 2,000 were made and it gained a reputation as the finest smoothbore cannon ever made.
The two British Devastation-class battleships of the 1870s, HMS Devastation and HMS Thunderer, were the first class of ocean-going capital ship that did not carry sails, and the first which mounted the entire main armament on top of the hull rather than inside it.
