The Development of Ironclads - 1872 to 1879 in the Royal Navy - The Last Stand of the Sail 

Pinned post for Q&A :)

*_Half a million people_* people listening to Drach talk about naval stuff! Nelson would be proud! Congratulations!

This is it!! Record this for posterity! This Wednesday Ironclad special is THE video in which Drach achieved the incredible 500K subscribers Milestone!!! Congratulations Drach!! 🎉🎉🎉 🍾 🍾

Last time I was this early HMS Captain still seemed like a good idea!

1875 navies be like: "If we fire this 100in shot with this super stubby overgrown potato gun at the enemy, we will eventually pile up so much additional tonnage on him that he´ll just drown."

Congratulations on 500k subscribers. May you now get 1 million subscribers next

I call this period the "Ugly Period" as none of these ships possessed any beauty or semblance of grace while moving. This is mostly due to the need to concentrate weight amidships as the iron hull structure would have hogged if the turrets were located fore and aft. The idea of a citadel amidships also addressed this problem and would be resolved only much later at the turn of the century. I would also note that when it came to being ugly France takes first place with their "hotel" superstructures and ugly tumblehome hulls. Kudos to Drach for hitting the 500k mark of subscribers, which just goes to show you that quality always wins.

He finally made part two! Also only the Ironclad era would think of arming the same Ship with both 10" and 11" guns

30:15 I do appreciate that the "flexible" propulsion options of steam-or-sail ended with HMS "Inflexible." Seems fitting.

37:27 "Until in 1903 a torpedo test went a *little* better than expected, and sank her." Aside from being a hilarious description of the sinking, am I the only one astonished that 1) a torpedo was actually being *tested* and 2) that it *worked?*

1:17 If you can lie down on the deck and dip a hand into the sea … you may need more freeboard.

Drach, a discussion on ironclads and you don't mention _Thunder Child_ which engaged several Martian walkers and destroyed at least two and perhaps even three

Alexandras Artillerie attacked Alexandria.

Any chance Drach of doing a history of the captain's Great Cabin? Mahogany splendors to MDF and plastic....

FINALLY! I've been waiting for this series to continue for so long ❤

Congratulations on the milestone

So happy to see this series back! It's one of my favourite series on the channel.

Thanks, Drach,. I was afraid I would pass away before you resumed my favorite era of warship.

It still amazes me how the Royal Navy just kept some of their outdated ships around or even in reserve even after most of them were basically or COMPLETELY outdated. Like HMS Temeraire was launched in 1876 but wasn’t scrapped until 1921, image being told in 1916 “you’ll be sailing on Temeraire, the ironclad not the battleship” 😂

ITS HERE! ITS FINALLY HERE!

@drachinifel This was the original series that helped me find the channel, and I'm glad to see you going back!

That picture of Nelson as a training ship looks like something from Fallout.

For a very short time in the 1870s the Dutch ironclad turret ram ships HNLMS Koning der Nederlanden and her half-sister were the most powerful ships in Asian waters, signalling the Dutch commitment to retaining their East-Asian colony. It all went downhill from there.

That sketch at 9:41. The British are brilliant. They equipped their gun with a hind sight because hindsight is always 20-20!

My dad was a gunner on a liberty ship ww2 and I love the way you describe the nuts and bolts of all things warship.

Congratulations on half a million subscribers! Excellent channel, well deserved.

Congratulations on 500k Drach, can't wait to see you hit 1 million. The 32nd Drydock was my first video and that seems so long ago.

Out for breakfast, but going to listen to this tonight. Interesting topic.. to me these years are the forgotten years of ship design. Looking forward to it.

Wow a return to the ironclad series! Thank you

Congratulations Drach!

I've been waiting for this one ! Congratulations on 500k Drach.

Super glad this series is back - was just watching the last RN one yesterday, this was up when I woke up this AM!!

It’s just sad looking at those ships with sailing rigs knowing what’s already happening. Especially if you already know that history will repeat itself in 1905 and in the late 30s-WWII era.

One must wonder at what point engineers were like "lets illuminate this otherwise pitch dark room by installing lamps that blind you when looking at them and kill you when bumping into them" and mounted open 800 Volt DC arc lamps. The amazing amounts of UV radiation aside, arc lamps need to be maintained frequently since they work by essentially burning graphite rods with an electric arc between them.

Next milestone: 1 Million Subscribers!!!

Finally! We've been waiting years for this!

Great work, as usual. But, please look carefully at your diagram of Temeraire's disappearing gun mount. It's a simple parallelogram. The gun recoiled straight back, and the turntable then rotated to the loading position. It did not flip end-over-end. Your diagram seems to be from "The Big Gun" by Peter Hodges. His text makes the action clear -- it recoiled straight back.

Thanks @drachinifel! Been waiting so long for this one 😁😁

I missed this series soo much

Interesting, the top video youtube is recommending I watch after this is one of Drach's from two years ago.....about the early development of ironclads in the Royal Navy.

Idea for a future research and video? Hi Drach, the HMS Ganges naval training school near Harwich is being quickly redeveloped. It has stood mostly unused since the last cadets left in 1976 when school leaving age went to 16 from 14. I went there with my Dad to see this. There is a museum but what I would like to know more about is the original HMS Ganges a wooden wall ship of the line which was built in Bombay out of teak shortly after the Napoleonic wars. It served as the original training vessel for the school and was finally broken up some time just before the second world war. I find it amazing that ships were built in India for the Royal Navy and this one certainly had a long career. I feel this would make for interesting content as even the museum has little information on this ship. Thank you and congratulations on meeting 500,000 subs.

The hull thicknesses are just unbelievable

Thank you I've been waiting so long for this

man I love ironclads

Congrats on 500k subscribers Drach.

Congrats on 500.000 subscribers!

A litany of issues seems a tad understated .... Superb work again sir 😊

Congrats on 500k subs!

Great video, love the Ironclad era. Well done on 500k subs, well deserved.

Congratulations Drac on 500,000 subscribers!

As usual, good selection of photos and diagrams. Interesting comments on the tactical deployment of HMS Shannon.

Celebrate this with a video on James Cook, scion of British meritocracy

Yes was waiting forever for this thank you Admiral Drach

Congratulation on 500K subs, well deserved :)

I have been so waiting for this one.

Congratulations Drach on reaching 500k subs. Ive been here since you had 1,000 or less. Cheers you brilliant beautiful bastards. Hahahahaha

DRACH congratulations on 500K subs💯🖖

Wunderbar! I've been hanging out for another video on my favourite period of naval design. Many thanks, Drach. Now on to the Marine Nationale!

Well worth the wait, Many thanks

Congratulations on the 500k👍👏

Congratz on 500K, and thanks for all of the amazing videos through the years.

Absolutely fascinating!! I had no idea the Regia Marina developed the 17.7" gun and before dawn of 20th century. Also the coastal battery style guns intrigue me. I wonder if anyone has reworked the design using modern metallurgical methods and materials i.e. aluminum and titanium. Great video Drach

@Drach can you explore the development of submarines?

Great Video and thanks for the sources.

Congrats on 500k Drach!

Thanks Drach.

Informative, informal and inspirational. I think I need to sculpt some 1/1500 ironclads now!

Half a million subscribers! Well done!!

Glad this is continuing.

Ooooo I made it to an upload early. Here's to another quality informative video

32:04 Law of Revelation: The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

I find it fascinating how quickly ships, aircraft and cars all changed within a few short decades. There is phenomenal where a design will evolve toward a specific result (given a set of constraints, and design goals). The best example is the wheel. The wheel has not gotten better in centuries, not even a little. Now go ask chatGPT why all cars look so similar today, and it will tell you its regulations that caused it - which is pure propaganda. We live in weird times.

Wonderful, I love this serie.

Just when I think that RU-vid has become as vast a wasteland as broadcast TV -- Drach drops a new video.....

I was so surprised that when Drach said the word "scrapped" at 12:12 and the video didn't end

Really enjoying your content

*inhales* YEEEEEESSSS!!!

Congrats Drach on reaching 500k subscribers 🙂 Excellent video on a highly dynamic period in the RN's history. There is, however, a need to correct your reference to the ironclad Nelson 'replacing' a predecessor with the same name. The ironclad Nelson in this video replaced the wooden screw corvette Wolverene as the Australia Station flagship in 1882 and was relieved by the armoured cruiser Orlando in 1888: clearly, the RN wasn't necessarily sending its First Eleven to Australia if it could be helped :-) The previous Nelson you referred to was a 120-gun three decker built for the RN in 1814. However, having been razeed the first time and receiving a screw engine in 1860, she never entered RN service: instead, she was gifted to the colonial Victorian Naval Forces (as *their* flagship) in 1865 as a harbour defence and training ship, for service in Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay. She was razeed again the late 1870s before she was laid up in 1891 and sold in 1898. She was cut down again for use as a coal lighter on the Tamar River in northern Tasmania until she was slowly scrapped in the late 1920/early 1930s. Although clearly pedantic, the point to make is that besides the RN Squadron, four of the six Australian colonies had their own mostly part-time naval forces (although NSW more often than not didn't actually have any ships :-)) Even so, the RN and the locals didn't have much to do with each other until the RAN was established in 1911: colonial prejudices aside, to be fair the RN didn't think much of its own reserves during this period either!

Yay, I only watched the first part recently so this is nice.

Bloody hell, that took a while 😂 Great to see another addition to the series, I've just open my beer, so perfect timing 😁😁

I cant see how that disappearing gun flips its self over to the loading position. Looing at the mechanism, im sure it loweres then rotates to a rearward faceing position.

HMS Neptune's final rampage against its own fleet is one part amusing and one part vaguely terrifying.

501K eh Drach? Not bad. I think the salt beef, hard tack and beer video was what won it.

oh another part to feed my evenings, thats gonna play a couple of dozen of time over the next 24months or so :D

The Qing government planned to buy those Ottoman coastal defence ironclads back in 1877-1878, but after considering the ships' performance and price, Lihong Zhang decided not to purchase them. They decided to purchase the turret version of the Saxon class ironclad instead.

I can't help but imagine HMS Neptune reincarnated into the Kamchatka, with added paranoia.

This took long enough that it could be the History of the Rust Clads, but worth the wait.

Are there any preserved ships from this period? I would love to visit these old versions of the Warspite or Rodney. They are such a weird, transitional stage in warship development I would have been utterly fascinated to tour them.

Yes !!! Finally !

someone need to make a total war style game with naval battles set in this era from earliest iron clads to this era of iron clads

Okay I listen to this to sleep but everytime I hear that the Alexandria needed a full sail rig because of the size of the empire only to spend her entire service life in the Mediterranean totally negating the need for a full sail rig I become fully awake for a minute!

10:10 I was wondering what that eliptical shape was all about. Very interesting

Congratulations to Drachinifel for reaching his first Half-Million subscibers! +][+

Woohoo! 500k subs!

With every intro I think about the nameless men whose faces were captured by the camera. Some of their descendants might be watching that footage today. We'll never know.

theres something absolutely wild about a citidel containing *sail* powered ship

15 knots now that must be some sort speed record.

Anyone else want Drach to do a special on blast effect/ self damage?

Thanks great job

For the world’s greatest naval power, Britain often had singular bad luck with their ship designs over the years. - No wonder Admiral Beatty observed on the eve of the Battle of Jutland, “There’s something wrong with our bloody ships today!"