3-008-902 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The new iron-clad fleet: launch at Chatham Dockyard of H.M.S. frigate Royal Oak, 50 guns, 1862. '...the first completed of a new class of wooden vessels in the course of construction under the special direction of the Admiralty, and the first iron-cased war-ship built at the Royal dockyards [by Mr. 0. W. Lang. She has]...engines of 1000-horse power by Messrs. Maudslay...in the Royal Oak the usual figure-head, the graceful cutwater, and all the elaborate moulding that the eye is accustomed to meet in the bows of the earlier ships is entirely dispensed with, and a massive iron stem, with a sharp outward curve, for the purpose of being used as a ram, is substituted. The alteration from the general form of stem is still more complete, the lines at the counter and hammock netting running off to a point as fine as the bows of a schooner - a most excellent arrangement for the prevention of a vessel being raked. On each broadside of the ship three rows of iron plates, 4½in. thick, and weighing between four and five hundred tons, are already in their places. She will he encased in iron from stem to stem, the plates tapering off to about half the above-mentioned thickness at those parts, the armour descending to five feet below the water-line'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.