Born:  7 June 1829; Died;  Jan 12th 1910

Date	Rank
3 May 1853	Lieutenant
3 July 1860	Commander
11 April 1866	Captain
8 January 1883	Rear-Admiral
15 December 1888	Vice-Admiral
7 June 1894	Retired Vice-Admiral
9 December 1894	Retired Admiral
Date from	Date to	Service
(2 June 1859)		Lieutenant in Edgar, commanded by James Edward Katon, flagship of Rear-Admiral John Elphinstone Erskine, Channel squadron, flag-Lieutenant
13 December 1862	14 April 1866	Commander in Shearwater (from commissioning at Plymouth), Pacific
12 August 1871	18 July 1873	Captain in Cossack (until paying off at Sheerness), Australia
21 September 1874	1 June 1877	Captain in Newcastle (from commissioning at Sheerness), 1875 Flying squadron
15 March 1878	7 January 1881	Captain in Warrior(1), Coast Guard, Portland (and the Channel squadron)

Notes:

1. Warrior was designed and built in response to an aggressive French shipbuilding programme which saw the introduction of the first iron-clad warship La Gloire designed by the brilliant naval architect Stanislas Charles Henri Dupuy de Lome.

Determined to see off this challenge to the supremacy of the Royal Navy the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir John Somerset Pakington, determined to build a ship so superior in terms of quality, speed, size, armament and armour that it would be inconceivable to France that she could take Britain on in a sea battle.

When commissioned by Captain the Hon. Arthur Auckland Leopold Pedro Cochrane, on August 1st 1861, Warrior was the largest warship in the world, at 9,210 tons displacement she was fully 60% larger than La Gloire.

The ship underwent minor modifications after a sea trial. In June 1862, she started active service in the Channel Squadron, patrolling coastal waters and sailing to Lisbon and Gibraltar.

Having introduced a revolution in naval architecture, by 1864 Warrior was superseded by faster designs, with bigger guns and thicker armour. By 1871 she was no longer regarded as the crack ship she had once been, and her roles were downgraded to Coastguard and reserve services. In May of 1883 her fore and main masts were found to be rotten, and not considered worth the cost of repair, Warrior was placed in the reserve, eventually converted to a floating school for the Navy and re-named Vernon III in 1904.

Put up for sale as scrap in 1924, no buyer could be found, and so, in March 1929 she left Portsmouth to be taken to Pembroke Dock and converted into a floating oil pontoon, re-named again as Oil Fuel Hulk C77. By 1978, she was the only surviving example of the 'Black Battlefleet' - the 45 iron hulls built for the Royal Navy between 1861 and 1877.

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