HMS Zealous - Battleship
Country : UK Launched : 7th March 1864
HMS Zealous was laid down on 26 October 1859 as a wooden two-deck, 90-gun ship of the line by Pembroke Royal Dockyard, but her construction was suspended pending experience with the conversion of her half-sisters of the Prince Consort class to broadside ironclads. The Admiralty ordered on 2 July 1862 that she be cut down one deck and converted to an armoured frigate for the price of £239,258. The ship was launched on 7 March 1864 and commissioned in September 1866, but was not completed until 4 October 1866.
In order to match the French deployment of armored corvettes of the Belliqueuse and Alma classes in the Pacific Ocean the Admiralty ordered Zealous to sail for the west coast of Canada shortly after she was completed. Upon her arrival the ship became the flagship, and reached her operational base at Esquimalt in July 1867 (Esquimalt was the headquarters of the Pacific Station); she remained moored there, at the end of a telegraph link with Britain, until April 1869. During this time her only sea service was for gunnery practice on two days every quarter. In January 1870 she picked up a fresh crew at Panama brought out by the two-decker HMS Revenge. After six years on station she was relieved by Revenge as flagship and started for home. Her bottom had not been cleaned since she had left Great Britain and she could only make a maximum of 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph) under sail or steam so her return voyage took five months. Zealous struck a rock while sailing through the English Narrows in the southwestern coast of Chile, but was only slightly damaged. She was refitted in Plymouth in April 1873 and then became guard ship at Southampton until 1875, when she was paid off. The ship was placed in reserve in Portsmouth until sold for scrap in September 1886.
As coal was extremely expensive on the West Coast of the Americas, HMS Zealous generally used her sails and covered more miles under sail than any of the other Victorian sailing ironclads, and in her whole career never once travelled in company with another ironclad. She was also the first British ironclad to sail further from Britain than the Mediterranean.
BECAME GUARDSHIP AT SOUTHAMPTON 1873. SOLD FOR SCRAP IN 1886.
Sold September 1886.
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