HMS Agamemnon was a Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 91-gun battleship

Battleship

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...

 ordered by the Admiralty

Admiralty

The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 in 1849 in response to the perceived threat from 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...

 by their possession of ships of the Napoléon class

Le Napoléon (1850)

The Napoléon was a 90-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, and the very first purpose-built steam battleship in the world . She is also considered the first true steam battleship, and the first screw battleship ever . Launched in 1850, she was the lead ship of a class of 9 battleships, all...

. She was the first British battleship to be designed and built from the keel up with installed steam power, although, due to the inefficiency of steam engines of the period, it was expected that she would spend much of her time travelling under sail power. She therefore carried a full square rig on three masts, in common with large sailing warships of the period.

She carried an armament of muzzle loading smooth-bore cannon, as usual for warships at this time, on two decks. She was completed in 1852.

She was not the first British battleship to be completed with steam power; , a pre-existing square-rigged second-rate, was converted to ancillary steam power (retaining her rig) and completed in 1851.

Name

The ship is named after Agamemnon

Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...

, the King of Mycenae, who led the Greek forces in the Trojan War.

Naval

Agamemnon was attached to the Mediterranean Fleet and served in the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

 as flagship of Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons

Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons

Admiral Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons, GCB, KCH was a British naval commander and diplomat who led a distinguished career in the Royal Navy, culminating with the Crimean War and his appointment as Commander of the Black Sea Fleet...

. She participated in the bombardment of Sebastopol

Sebastopol

Sebastopol is a former spelling and frequent variant of Sevastopol, the port on the Crimean peninsula.Sebastopol may refer to the following:Places:* Sebastopol, California, USA* Sebastopol, Mississippi, USA...

 on 17 October 1854 and the shelling of Fort Kinburn, at the mouth of the Dnieper river, in 1855.

Transatlantic cable

In 1857 the government fitted out Agamemnon to carry 1,250 tons of telegraphic cable for the Atlantic Telegraph Company's first attempt to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable

Transatlantic telegraph cable

The transatlantic telegraph cable was the first cable used for telegraph communications laid across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. It crossed from , Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, in western Ireland to Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland. The transatlantic cable connected North America...

. Although this initial cable attempt was unsuccessful, the project was resumed the following year and Agamemnon and her US counterpart USS Niagara

USS Niagara (1855)

The second USS Niagara was a steam frigate in the United States Navy.Niagara was launched by New York Navy Yard on 23 February 1855; sponsored by Miss Annie C. O'Donnell; and commissioned on 6 April 1857, Captain William L...

successfully joined the ends of their two sections of cable in the middle of the Atlantic on 29 July 1858.