How strange! The link in Clairobscur post was the very same as the one I had intended to post, but somehow missed.
I think I’ll go and dig out me tinfoil hat!!
Strictly speaking, any ship of the line in 1840 would have been classed as a battleship, indeed HMS Victory was a battleship.
I see the point though, speed, armour and gun power were all transformed, from the deck crew being the heart of the ship to the stokers growing importance and the consequent change in heirarchy.
When HMS Victoria was launched, there was something of a public outcry that lives were being put at risk in wooden ships, which just shows how quickly things changed from 1840 to 1859, and the pace accelarated from there to the Dreadnought.
Turners painting ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ was an expression of extroadinary prescience, given that it was forst exhibited in 1838, a picture with huge symbolism, showing the old wood three decker battleship being towed to the breakers by a little paddle steamer, this being only just before the greatest changes were to take place.
Even by that early date it was clear that steam power would replace the world of sail and forces of nature, just as it done so in the factories and railways of the British Empire.
This, of course, is actually a reference to the first turrets on sea-going ships. The U.S. Navy had dozens of turret armed ships by 1865, beginning with the Monitor in the Spring of 1862. The U.S. “monitors,” were, of course, limited to rivers and bays, for the most part. There was a small class of “monitors” intended for ocean use, but they could only sail the ocean in transit, not actually fight on the high seas. These included the Roanoke, Puritan, and Dictator. An even larger and more sea-worthy group of Kalamazoo class “monitors” probably could have fought at sea, but they were incomplete in April of 1865 and they were allowed to rot.
The Chilean monitor Huascar was a fully sea-worthy, turret armed ship that was launched in 1865, well before the 1870 HMS Captain (with its full-rigged sails and tripod masts that pulled it over with a loss of all hands).
I had thought that the Huascar should get the honor, but I was initially thrown off because most of her dramatic battles occurred just before 1880, after the launch and loss of the Captain. However, with her 1865 launch, I would submit that the Huascar deserves the honor of being recognized as the first turreted sea vessel.
You missed my point. I was responding to the question in the OP, "What was the last great sail-powered warship. Since the Constitution is still a commissioned vessel, there is no answer, since there is as yet no last great sail-powered warship.
That’s a bit too nitpicky for my tastes. As the OPer, I’m going to ask you and everyone else to understand last in this case means “most recently constructed” not “only one remaining”.
And the point was that many, many ships had already eclipsed the Constitution, so its not a case of us having to wait for something better to come along and trump it. The Constitution is not in the running. Its comissioned status means nothing to this thread.
And in any event, the HMS Victory, which is also still with us, outclasses the Constitution by a huge margin. First Rates and frigates weren’t on the same playing field.
