HMS Wivern (1863)

HMS Wivern in 1865
Career (UK)
Ordered:	1862
Builder:	Laird, Son & Co., Birkenhead
Laid down:	April 1862
Launched:	29 August 1863
Completed:	10 October 1865
Fate:	Sold for scrap 1922
General characteristics
Displacement:	2,751 tons
Length:	224 ft 6 in (68.43 m) p/p
Beam:	42 ft 4 in (12.90 m)
Draught:	15 ft 6 in (4.72 m) light, 17 ft (5.2 m) deep load
Propulsion:	Lairds horizontal direct action; 1,450 ihp
Sail plan:	Ship-rigged
Speed:	10.5 knots
Complement:	153
Armament:	Four 9-inch muzzle-loading rifles
Armour:	Belt 4.5 inches, 3 inches at bow, 2 inches at stern Turret faces 10 inches Sides 5 inches

HMS Wivern was a 2,750-ton ironclad turret ship built at Birkenhead, England, one of two sister ships secretly ordered from the Laird & Sons shipyard by the Confederate States of America government in 1862. Her true ownership was concealed by the fiction that she was being constructed as the Egyptian warship El Monassir. She was to have been named Mississippi upon delivery to the Confederates. She would have been superior to all of the United States' Navy warships, and thus represented a most serious danger to the Union's control of the seas. However, effective Federal diplomacy prevented the emergence of this threat.

British service

The British government seized the pair of ironclads in October 1863, a few months after their launch and before they could be completed. In early 1864, the Admiralty purchased both for the Royal Navy, naming them HMS Scorpion and Wivern.

Completed in October 1865, Wivern was assigned to the Channel Fleet until 1868. After a refit that reduced her sailing rig from a barque to a schooner, the Wivern served briefly as a coastguard ship based at Hull and then went into reserve. In 1870 Wivern was brought back into active service and dispatched to Hong Kong.

The naval architect Edward James Reed wrote: "the turret-ship 'Wivern', belonging to the Royal Navy, has a low free-board (about 4 feet), and is very lightly armoured, while her armament is also very light. Yet on one occasion her behaviour at sea was so bad that she had to be brought head to wind in order to prevent her shipping large, and, of course, dangerous, quantities of water, the extreme angle of roll rising to 27 degrees each way."

Fate

Wivern remained in Hong Kong until sold for scrap in 1922, having been reduced to harbor duties from 1904.

Post script

One of her commanding officers was Captain Hugh Talbot Burgoyne, VC who was later appointed the commanding officer of HMS Captain. Captain was also a twin turret ship. Unfortunately it was lost in a storm of Cape Finisterre during the night 6/7 September 1870.