here we have HMS Minotaur the leading vessel of the Minotaur class. Minotaur was one of the Royal Navy's early ironclad frigates. she was laid down in 1861 but not completed until 1867 because of experiments on her guns and rigging. Minotaur was a large ship for the time at 411ft. long and displacing 10,627 tons. she carried four 9" rifled muzzle loading guns and twenty-four 7" rifled muzzle loading guns on the main deck. she had an armour belt from stem to stern of 4.5" on the ends and 5.5" amidships. Minotaur was powered by a single two cylinder trunk engine of 6,949 indicated horse power for a top speed of 14.3kts with a single screw of 24ft. diameter. she was also rigged for sail with 5 masts. she and her classmates were some of the poorest sailers in the fleet due to their great length and weight. the early ironclads needed sails even though they had steam as the early steam engines were quite inefficient and couldn't go very far on the amount of coal they could carry. also the traditional mindset of the Royal Navy was in favor of sails at the time. HMS Minotaur spent most of her career as flagship of the channel fleet. at Queen Victoria's 1887 Golden Jubilee Fleet Review Minotaur was the flagship. although in active service for around 30 years HMS Minotaur never had to fire a shot in anger. she was scrapped in 1922. the first picture is a bows on shot of the ship with some sailors standing by, perhaps part of an anchoring party as we can see the anchors are not yet down. the second picture is of Minotaur as completed in 1867 with all five masts. third is a picture of what looks like to me a Royal Marine gun crew exercising one of the 7" muzzle loading rifles. finally a stern shot of the ship. this is sometime in the 1890's as Minotaur is now armed with two breech loading chase guns on the poop{1891-2} and only a three masted barque rig{around 1894}.
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