The Lord Clyde class battleships, which consisted of and , were wooden-hulled ironclad frigates, designed by Sir Edward Reed

Edward James Reed

Sir Edward James Reed , KCB, FRS, was a British naval architect, author, politician, and railroad magnate. He was the Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy from 1863 until 1870...

, and promoted by the Board of Admiralty for economic reasons, in order to make use of the large stocks of seasoned timber available in the shipyards.

Overview

The design of these ships was based upon the design of , but in making the adaptation from this ship's design to the requirements of a wooden hull, Reed had only the behaviour of to learn from, and the tendency of her class to sag amidships had not at that time been recognised. Both ships were built with a beam equal to Royal Oak, and some twenty feet shorter.

The two ships differed in weight by some 360 tons, Lord Clyde being the lighter.

Their hulls were a complex sandwich structure, consisting of an inner layer of oak ribs 24 inches (609.6 mm) thick, a 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) iron skin, 6 inches (152.4 mm) of oak support and backing for the armour, an armour layer of 4.5 to 5.5 inches (110–140 mm) in thickness, and a thin sheathing of anti-fouling Muntz metal

Muntz metal

Muntz metal is a form of alpha-beta brass with about 60% copper, 40% zinc and a trace of iron. It is named after George Fredrick Muntz, a metal-roller of Birmingham, England who commercialised the alloy following his patent of 1832....

. It was believed at the time that the 15-inch Dahlgren

Dahlgren

-People:*Anders Dahlgren , Swedish politician who was a member of the Centre Party*Albert Dahlgren , Swedish-Canadian master carpenter*Charles G...

 guns carried by the American Federal monitors

Monitor (warship)

A monitor was a class of relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s until the end of World War II, and saw their final use by the United States Navy during the Vietnam War.The monitors...

would fail to penetrate this sandwich.

Living conditions on these ships were bad; with the exception of the most senior officers the whole crew were accommodated on the lower deck, with the only natural light being that which found its way through skylights on two decks into the wardroom. The scuttles along the entire deck opened only a few feet above the water line, and hence could not be opened if the ship was under way, for fear of being swamped. The sick-list was always higher than in ships with main deck berthing.