HMS Duke of Wellington (1852)

Duke of Wellington in drydock at Keyham, Devonport Dockyard, 5 March 1854
History
United Kingdom
NameDuke of Wellington
NamesakeArthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Ordered19 February 1844
BuilderPembroke Dockyard
Laid downMay 1849
Launched14 September 1852
Completed27 November 1853
Commissioned2 February 1853
RenamedFrom Windsor Castle, 1 October 1852
FateSold for scrap, 12 April 1904
General characteristics (as completed)
Class & typeModified Queen-class ship of the line
Displacement6,071 long tons (6,168 t)
Tons burthen3,771 19⁄94 (bm)
Length240 ft 7 in (73.3 m) (gun deck)
Beam60 ft 1 in (18.3 m)
Draught20 ft 3 in (6.2 m) (light)
Depth of hold24 ft 8 in (7.5 m)
Installed power
Propulsion1 shaft; 1 single-expansion steam engine
Sail planFull-rigged ship
Speed10.2 knots (18.9 km/h; 11.7 mph)
Complement1,100
Armament

HMS Duke of Wellington was a 131-gun, first-rate, modified Queen-class ship of the line built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the 1850s. She was converted to screw-propulsion while still under construction. Completed in 1853, the ship served as the flagship of the Baltic Fleet during the Crimean War of 1854–1856 against the Russian Empire. Afterward, Duke of Wellington was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until she was paid off in 1857. She briefly served as a depot ship and then became a training and receiving ship throughout most of the 1860s. In 1869, the ship became the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth and served in that role until 1891. Duke of Wellington was then hulked as an accommodation ship until 1903. She was sold for scrap the following year.

Background and description

Initially named HMS Windsor Castle after the royal castle,[1] she was originally ordered on 19 February 1844 as a sister ship of the Surveyor of the Navy, Sir William Symonds's, 110-gun, first rate Queen, but work was suspended on 9 December. After Symonds's resignation in 1847, her design was modified by the Assistant Surveyor John Edye into a 120-gun ship and she had been ordered to the modified design on 29 June 1848. She was intended to measure 210 feet (64 m) at the gun deck and 171 feet 1 inch (52.1 m) at the keel. The ship would have had a beam of 60 feet (18.3 m), a depth of hold of 24 feet 8 inches (7.5 m) and had a tonnage of 3,185 61⁄94 tons burthen. Her crew would have numbered 970 officers and ratings.[2] The ship had the usual three-masted full-ship rig.[3] Windsor Castle was intended to be armed with 120 muzzle-loading, smoothbore guns that consisted of thirty 8 in (203 mm) (65 cwt), 68-pounder shell guns[Note 1] on her lower gun deck, thirty 32-pounder (56 cwt) guns on her middle gun deck and thirty 32-pounders (42 cwt) on her upper gun deck. Her forecastle and quarterdeck would have carried a total of six 32-pounders (42 cwt) and fourteen short 32-pounder (25 cwt) guns between them. Four 18-pounder carronades would have been positioned on her poop deck.[4]

In response to the revolutionary French 90-gun, screw-powered ship of the line, Napoléon, the new Surveyor, Captain Baldwin Wake Walker, had already ordered the 101-gun, second rate St Jean d'Acre, but he wanted a first rate as soon as possible. He send Edye to HM Dockyard, Pembroke in December 1851 to determine Windsor Castle's suitability for conversion to screw power as she was already well advanced on the stocks.[5] Receiving a favorable report, he reordered the ship as a 131-gun steam ship on 19 January 1852. She needed to be cut in half to add 23 feet (7 m) amidships to accommodate the engines and boilers and 8 feet (2.4 m) at the stern to improve the flow of water to the screw.[6] This was done on 7 February 1852 by launching the stern section and then reattaching it after the new amidships section had been built.[7]

Windsor Castle's length at the gun deck increased to 240 feet 7 inches (73.3 m) and 201 feet 11 inches (61.5 m) on the keel. She had a beam of 60 feet 1 inch (18.3 m) and her depth of hold did not increase.[4] The ship had a deep draught of 24 feet 5 inches (7.4 m),[8] a tonnage of 3,771 19⁄94, and displaced 6,071 long tons (6,168 t). Her crew numbered 1,100 officers and ratings. The ship received the 700 nominal horsepower engine that had been built by Robert Napier and Sons for the iron frigate Simoom, which had surrendered it on conversion to a troopship. The two-cylinder, geared, single-expansion steam engine drove a single propeller shaft.[4] During her sea trials on 11 April 1853 in Stokes Bay, the ship's boilers provided enough steam for the engine to produce 1,979 indicated horsepower (1,476 kW) that was good for a speed of 10.2 knots (18.9 km/h; 11.7 mph). In service her engine proved unsatisfactory.[9][4]

The ship was armed with 131 guns that consisted of twenty-six 32-pounder (56 cwt) guns and ten 8-inch (65 cwt), 68-pounder shell guns on her lower gun deck, thirty 56-cwt 32-pounder guns and six 8-inch shell guns on her middle gun deck and thirty-eight 32-pounders (42 cwt) on her upper gun deck. Between her forecastle and quarterdeck, she carried twenty 32-pounder gunnades and a single 68-pounder gun that was positioned on the forecastle as a pivot gun so that it could serve as a bow chaser.[4]

Construction and career

Duke of Wellington in 1853, running under steam and sail

Windsor Castle, the third ship of her name in the RN,[10] was laid down in May 1849 and was launched on 14 September 1852.[4] The Duke of Wellington died that same day and the ship was renamed in his honour on 1 October. She was the first ship of her name to serve in the RN.[11] The ship departed for the installation of her engine on 9 October for HM Dockyard, Portsmouth, under tow by the paddle sloop Inflexible. Her original lion figurehead was replaced by an image of the Duke in February 1853 that was carved by Hellyer & Sons.[12] She was commissioned by Commodore Henry Byam Martin on 2 February for service with the Western Squadron.[4]

The decisive Russian victory in the Battle of Sinop over the Ottoman Navy on 30 November alarmed politicians in both Britain and France. They decided to intervene on the side of the Ottomans and the British began forming a Baltic Fleet in February 1854 in anticipation of war. The Russians did not withdraw their forces in the Balkans as demanded by the British and French governments on 27 February and declarations of war by both governments followed a month later. Admiral Sir Charles Napier, commander-in-chief of the Baltic Fleet, was charged to blockade the exit from the Baltic Sea and all of the Russian ports therein. Duke of Wellington was part of his initial forces that left Spithead on 11 March and proceeded towards the mouth of the Gulf of Finland in mid-April.[13][14] The ship did not participate in any action in 1854 and was part of the force based near Nargen Island (now Naissaar) blockading Reval (now Tallinn) and the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland by late 1854. By 19 October, bad weather had forced the ships to withdraw to Kiel, Germany, where they blockaded the entrance to the Baltic Sea until December when they were ordered home.[15]

After service in the Western Squadron, she was designated the flagship of the fleet that Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Napier was to lead to the Baltic on the outbreak of the war with Russia. Duke of Wellington served as his flagship throughout the Baltic campaign of 1854 and returned to the Baltic the following year as the flagship of Napier’s successor in the command, Rear-Admiral Richard Saunders Dundas, being present at the bombardment of Sveaborg.

Duke of Wellington firing a gun salute in Portsmouth Harbour during her time as flagship there.

Under trials on 11 April 1853 she had made 10.15 knots under steam, but the second-hand engines turned out distinctly unsatisfactory, and the hurried conversion had compromised her structural strength; she thus saw no active service after the Crimean War and paid off in 1856. She served as guard ship of sailing ordinary at Devonport from 1860 to 1863, then as a receiving ship at Portsmouth from 1863, where she became a familiar and much-photographed sight, always described on postcards as "the flagship of Sir Charles Napier". She replaced HMS Victory as flagship of the Port Admiral at Portsmouth in 1869 (with Victory becoming her tender), firing salutes to passing dignitaries, such as Queen Victoria on her way to Osborne House. On 4 February 1879, a fire broke out at the fore of the ship. It was extinguished with the assistance of two tugs.[16] She served as flagship for the Commander-in-Chief from 24 October 1884 to 1886 and for Victoria's birthday celebration and fleet review at Portsmouth in 1896 "dressed smartly for the occasion" (despite having been paid off on 31 March 1888).

The personnel stationed on her eventually moved into RN Barracks, Portsmouth in 1903 and she was sold to Henry Castle & Sons to be broken up in 1904.

Ship's timbers discovered on the Thames foreshore at Charlton have been identified as being from the Duke of Wellington.[17]

Sister ships

Of her three sisters, all of which received more powerful machinery specially designed for them:

  • HMS Marlborough was completed to a modified design and served as flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet from 1858 to 1864; thereafter she too was a receiving ship at Portsmouth, renamed Vernon II, surviving until broken up in 1924.
  • HMS Prince of Wales was completed to the same design as Marlborough in 1860 but saw no sea service; in 1869 she was renamed Britannia and became the stationary training ship for officer cadets on the River Dart.
  • HMS Royal Sovereign was completed to the same design as the Duke of Wellington but was cut down to the lower deck and converted in 1862–1864 into the first British turret ship to try out the ideas of Captain Cowper Phipps Coles. She was fitted with four turrets mounting 9 inch muzzle-loading rifled guns. She was regarded as primarily experimental and her longest voyage was to Cherbourg in 1865 before becoming the tender to the gunnery school HMS Excellent. She was scrapped in 1885.

The Imperial Russian Navy built a ship of its own based on the Duke of Wellington, the Imperator Nikolai I.

Notes

  1. ↑ "Cwt" is the abbreviation for hundredweight, 65 cwt referring to the weight of the gun.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Manning & Walker, p. 489
  2. ↑ Winfield 2014, pp. 17, 19
  3. ↑ Lambert, pp. 122, 127
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Winfield 2014, p. 19
  5. ↑ Lambert, pp. 35–36
  6. ↑ Winfield 2010, p. 111
  7. ↑ Philips, p. 127
  8. ↑ Lambert, p. 127
  9. ↑ Lambert, pp. 127–128
  10. ↑ Colledge, Warlow & Bush, p. 483
  11. ↑ Colledge, Warlow & Bush, p. 126
  12. ↑ Phillips, p. 130
  13. ↑ Duckers, pp. 11–12, 17
  14. ↑ Clowes, VI, p. 413, 415
  15. ↑ Duckers, pp. 39–40
  16. ↑ "Fire on Board H.M.S. The Duke of Wellington". Nottinghamshire Guardian. No. 1750. Nottingham. 7 February 1879. p. 8.
  17. ↑ "London's lost warships rediscovered". University College London. 27 July 2009. Archived from the original on 2 June 2011. Retrieved 8 February 2010.

Bibliography

  • Clowes, William Laird (1901). The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present. Vol. VI. Sampson Low, Marston. Retrieved 11 June 2026.
  • Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben & Bush, Steve (2020). Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy from the 15th Century to the Present (5th revised and updated ed.). Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5267-9327-0.
  • Duckers, Peter (2011). The Crimean War at Sea: Naval Campaigns against Russia, 1854-56. Pen & Sword Maritime. ISBN 978-1-84884-267-0.
  • Jones, Colin (1996). "Entente Cordiale, 1865". In McLean, David & Preston, Antony (eds.). Warship 1996. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-685-X.
  • Lambert, Andrew D. (1984). Battleships in Transition: The Creation of the Steam Battlefleet 1815-1860. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-315-X.
  • Manning, T. D. & Walker, C. F. (1959). British Warship Names. Putnam. OCLC 838607. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
  • Phillips, Lawrie (2014). Pembroke Dockyard and the Old Navy: A Bicentennial History. The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7509-5214-9.
  • Winfield, Rif (2014). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1817–1863: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84832-169-4.
  • Winfield, Rif (2010). First Rate: The Greatest Warships of the Age of Sail. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-264-5.
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