Pembroke Dockyard and the Old Navy by Lieutenant-Commander Lawrie Phillips

Author:Lieutenant-Commander Lawrie Phillips [Phillips, Lieutenant-Commander Lawrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2014-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

The first ironclad built at Pembroke Dockyard, HMS Prince Consort, was christened by Miss Jones, daughter of David Jones, MP for Carmarthenshire, on Thursday evening, 26 June 1862. The ship’s timber hull was armoured with plates made at Chepstow and transported to the Dockyard by a special South Wales Railway train of twenty-three wagons. The ironclad may have grounded off the Dockyard as Prince Consort Rock appeared until recently on Admiralty charts. A primitive souvenir drawing by T.H. Eastlake was produced locally. (Author)

The new ship appears to have grounded on an uncharted rock off the Dockyard soon after launching. Although this was later blown up the point still appears on the Admiralty charts as the Prince Consort Rock – ‘a pinnacle with a least depth of 6.4 metres (21ft) … near the centre of the channel’ (West Coast of England and Wales Pilot (NP37), 1974).

Work now proceeded quickly. The Times of 16 December 1862 reported that, ‘The iron masts of the Prince Consort iron-plated frigate have been received at the dockyard at Pembroke. They are entirely of wrought iron and have been manufactured at the iron works at Chepstow, whence they were sent by special train down the South Wales Railway … they were conveyed on a train comprising 23 limber carriages … Enormous sheers have some time been ready on the deck of the Prince Consort, and, as the iron-plating is well advanced, in a short time this fine frigate will be ready for floating out of the dry dock, where the process of armour-plating has been carried on.’ The new plating machinery much impressed the Haverfordwest and Milford Haven Telegraph, which reported on 6 August that ‘the bending and twisting the iron plates to fit the varied shapes of the vessel are accomplished … in the most effectual as well as astonishing manner’.

The ship was completed at Devonport on 6 February 1864 at a cost of £266,173. The conversion proved a great success; the Prince Consort on completion was a serious middleweight, able to inflict and withstand significant damage. Her armament was almost as powerful as that in HMS Warrior and her 4½in armour plating more complete, covering the entire hull from upper deck level to 6in below the waterline. She proved very handy under steam or sail – ‘as stiff as a church under canvas’ – riding well in a head sea but with a deep roll and was thus an unsteady gun platform.

The brand new HMS Prince Consort, with a temporary, makeshift crew drawn from other ships at Plymouth, was sent urgently to Liverpool to prevent the release of two powerful turret ships built there by Lairds for the Confederate Navy (they were bought into the Royal Navy as HMS Scorpion and HMS Wyvern). On passage the ship ran into a severe storm off the Welsh coast and she might well have been lost; she shipped heavy seas over her 7ft-high bulwarks but the scuppers could not discharge the water quickly enough and the upper deck became a pond with seas pouring down the hatchways and funnel casings.

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