Britain’s Majestic class of the 1890s was the largest class of battleships ever built. In many ways the nine-strong class symbolised the age. The names selected for them were redolent of the period, particularly the neo-classical revival that had become a...
The loss of the battleship HMS Victoria to a ramming accident in June 1893 sent shock waves across the British Empire. As we saw in the last article, she went down remarkably quickly after a collision with the battleship HMS Camperdown. There was very heavy loss of...
In many ways the 1890s were the high noontide of Britain’s globe-spanning Empire. It was also when they suffered their worst naval disaster of the late nineteenth century with the sinking of HMS Victoria – and it occurred not as a dramatic outcome of some storm or...
In the mid-1880s the British began building two new battleships as part of the so-called ‘Northbrook’ programme, a massive burst of naval expenditure to which government reluctantly agreed in early December 1884. What then emerged from the drawing boards of the...
From the very onset of the Civil War, the Confederacy knew they were overmatched by the industrial might of the Union. The Union Navy operated with near impunity along the shores of Confederate territory. Seeking a way to challenge this mighty foe, the Confederacy...
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