Danmark was an armored frigate of the Royal Danish Navy

Royal Danish Navy

The Royal Danish Navy is the sea-based branch of the Danish Defence force. The RDN is mainly responsible for maritime defence and maintaining the sovereignty of Danish, Greenlandic and Faroese territorial waters...

 originally ordered by the Confederate States Navy

Confederate States Navy

The Confederate States Navy was the naval branch of the Confederate States armed forces established by an act of the Confederate Congress on February 21, 1861. It was responsible for Confederate naval operations during the American Civil War...

.

The origins of the Danmark lie in efforts of the Confederate States of America

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

 to purchase warships in Europe, which is to say in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

. These efforts were led by James Dunwoody Bulloch

James Dunwoody Bulloch

James Dunwody Bulloch was the Confederate States of America's chief foreign agent in Great Britain during the American Civil War. He was the half-brother of a distinguished Confederate naval officer, Irvine Bulloch and of Martha "Mittie" Bulloch Roosevelt. Mittie was the mother of future U.S...

, but the Danmark was ordered by another Confederate agent, Lieutenant (later Commander) James H. North.

North was sent to Europe by Confederate Navy secretary Stephen Mallory

Stephen Mallory

Stephen Russell Mallory served in the United States Senate as, Senator from Florida from 1850 to the secession of his home state and the outbreak of the American Civil War. For much of that period, he was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs...

 with the aim of buying a completed sea-going ironclad warship, the French Navy

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

's Gloire

French battleship La Gloire

The French Navy's La Gloire was the first ocean-going ironclad battleship in history.She was developed following the Crimean War, in response to new developments in naval gun technology, especially the Paixhans guns and rifled guns, which used explosive shells with increased destructive power...

, and ordering a similar vessel on Confederate account. The French government refused to sell Gloire, or to allow a sister ship to be built in French shipyards.

North proceeded to Britain, where the Whig

British Whig Party

The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

 government had adopted a laissez-faire

Laissez-faire

In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....

 attitude to American arms-buying. Here he met with George Thompson, co-owner of the Clydebank

Clydebank

Clydebank is a town in West Dunbartonshire, in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. Situated on the north bank of the River Clyde, Clydebank borders Dumbarton, the town with which it was combined to form West Dunbartonshire, as well as the town of Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire, and the Yoker and...

 shipbuilders J. & G. Thompson. North signed a contract with Thompson's on 21 May 1862 for an armoured frigate of some 3,000 tons and 80 metres in length, for a contract price of 190,000 pounds sterling—around two million Confederate dollars at the prevailing rate of exchange—paying a deposit of 18,000 pounds. Thompson's contracted to the deliver the ship by 1 June 1863.

Known to the Confederates as "North's ship", or as "Number 61", she was Santa Maria to her builders. As finally completed, she displaced 4,750 tons, a slab-sided three-masted barque

Barque

A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts.- History of the term :The word barque appears to have come from the Greek word baris, a term for an Egyptian boat. This entered Latin as barca, which gave rise to the Italian barca, Spanish barco, and the French barge and...

. Under steam, she would make 8 knots (4.4 m/s).

By the summer of 1863, the Confederate agents in Europe were seeking to sell off North's ship, offering her to the Imperial Russian Navy

Imperial Russian Navy

The Imperial Russian Navy refers to the Tsarist fleets prior to the February Revolution.-First Romanovs:Under Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, construction of the first three-masted ship, actually built within Russia, was completed in 1636. It was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein...

. The ship was clearly unsuited to Confederate needs, too large a crew, and too large a ship, for their limited resources to support, and her draft of 6 metres was too deep for operations in the shoal waters on the Confederate coasts. Thompson's too were concerned that they would not be allowed to deliver the ship to the Confederates in the changed political climate and cancelled the contract in late 1863.

Work continued slowly on the ship, which was launched on 23 February 1864. The outbreak of the Second War of Schleswig

Second War of Schleswig

The Second Schleswig War was the second military conflict as a result of the Schleswig-Holstein Question. It began on 1 February 1864, when Prussian forces crossed the border into Schleswig.Denmark fought Prussia and Austria...

led the Royal Danish Navy to purchase the ship, but delays in fitting out and working up meant that she was not ready for service before the end of the war.

The Danmark undertook only one active commission, from June to October 1869. At sea with her armament aboard she rolled violently, and the coal consumption of her engines was extremely high. As a result, she remained in reserve thereafter, becoming a barracks ship in 1893.

As commissioned into Danish service, she was armed with 20 60-pounder (8-inch) smoothbore muzzle-loading guns of 88 hundredweight and 8 18-pounder rifled muzzle-loading guns of 40 hundredweight. In 1865 this was changed to an all-rifled muzzle-loading armament of 12 60-pounder guns and 10 24-pounder guns. Two more 24-pounder guns were added in 1867.