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The Ship That Terrified Europe. HMS Warrior's Deadly Arsenal
September 9, 2024 · 9 min · 866 views · Portsmouth
What this video covers
Dave and Bill cross Portsmouth Harbour on the Gosport Ferry to tour HMS Warrior, the 1863 iron-hulled warship preserved at Portsmouth.Watch Starting on the upper deck, they note three sets of steering wheels — each manned by 20-plus men in heavy weather — and high bulwarks that gave rise to the modern ship's bridge.1:30 On the gun deck, mostly muzzle-loaded smoothbore cannon sit alongside breech-loading 110-pound rifled guns with a five-mile range, compared to one mile for contemporary French guns.2:09 The gun deck also housed all 520 enlisted men, who ate, slept in hammocks, and had no private sanitation.2:52 The captain's quarters, by contrast, were furnished in comfort, with ropes overhead controlling the steering rudder and a mechanism requiring 600 men to retract the propeller into its tube.4:24 Below, the Orlop holds ten boilers with four furnaces each — 40 furnaces total — fed by 75 stokers working at 45°C, driving a twin-cylinder steam engine built by J. Penn & Sons of Greenwich that produced 4,100 shaft horsepower at roughly 66 rpm.5:47 Dave also shares a photograph of the P&O steamship Perra, built by C.J.7:51 Mayer in 1856 and trialled off Stokes Bay, whose builder later became the Thames Ironworks that constructed Warrior.8:04
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