HMS Penelope was the last small ironclad to be commissioned in the Royal Navy.

Because of the absence through illness of the Chief Constructor

Director of Naval Construction

The Director of Naval Construction was a senior British civil servant post in the Admiralty, that part of the British Civil Service that oversaw the Royal Navy. The post existed from 1860 to 1966....

, Sir Edward Reed

Edward James Reed

Sir Edward James Reed , KCB, FRS, was a British naval architect, author, politician, and railroad magnate. He was the Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy from 1863 until 1870...

, the design of this ship was entrusted to his brother-in-law and the future Chief Constructor, Nathaniel Barnaby.

Design

She was specifically designed and intended to be a ship of unusually shallow draught; why this was so cannot now be established, but it is a speculation the Board of Admiralty intended her for inshore use in the Baltic Sea

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

, where ships of greater draught than hers cannot come close to land without grounding. The same concept led Admiral Jackie Fisher, the First Lord of the Admiralty in the early part of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, to initiate the construction of the battlecruiser

Battlecruiser

Battlecruisers were large capital ships built in the first half of the 20th century. They were developed in the first decade of the century as the successor to the armoured cruiser, but their evolution was more closely linked to that of the dreadnought battleship...

s HMS Glorious, HMS Courageous and HMS Furious. Being of shallow draught, it was necessary to build her with twin screws, as a single screw (of larger diameter) would have been carried insufficiently deep to be adequately effective. This in turn required twin rudders, and an unusual shape to the stern which disturbed the free flow of water along the hull.

The shallowness of her draught made her a very poor performer under sail, and she was described as "drifting to leeward in a wind like a tea tray" (Captain Willes, R.N., one-time commander of Penelope}.

She was a broadside ironclad, with the guns being deployed centrally on either side of the ship in a box battery

Box battery

The box battery disposition of the main armament in a battleship was commonly used in ships built in the latter half of the nineteenth century; it was an interim disposition between full length broadside guns and turret-mounted artillery....

. A limited amount of axial, or end-on fire, was allowed for by the provision of secondary gun-ports at the corners of the battery, through which the end-most guns could be traversed to fire. The 5-inch weapons, situated two forward and one aft on the upper deck, were of only marginal effectiveness.

She was the first British capital ship to be fitted with a washroom.

Service history

Penelope was commissioned at Devonport, and served in the Channel Fleet

Channel Fleet

The Channel Fleet was the Royal Navy formation of warships that defended the waters of the English Channel from 1690 to 1909.-History:The Channel Fleet dates back at least to 1690 when its role was to defend England against the French threat under the leadership of Edward Russell, 1st Earl of...

 until June 1869. She was then guard ship at Harwich until 1882, which service was interrupted only by occasional short cruises in company with the reserve fleet. She was part of the Particular Service Squadron during the Russian war scare of June to August, 1878. In 1882 she was present at the bombardment of Alexandria, her shallow draught ensuring that she was designated as part of the inshore squadron. She sustained only minor damage from incoming fire from the shore, needing a replacement main yard and one 8 inches (203 mm) gun which was destroyed by a direct hit. She remained in the Suez zone as flagship until the conclusion of hostilities, and then returned home for a further five years service at Harwich. She was paid off in 1887, refitted, and sent to Simonstown as harbour receiving ship. In 1897 she was converted to a prison-ship, in which role she remained until being broken up at Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

.