HMS Conqueror was an ironclad battleship of the Victorian Royal Navy, whose main armament was an armoured ram.

This belief was reinforced by the action at the battle of Lissa, when the Austrian battleship Ferdinand Max rammed and sank the Italian Re D'Italia.

The Italian ship was at the time a stationary target, a detail which it appears did not receive, in naval architects' minds, the attention it deserved.

The heavy artillery was only intended to be used against a target which was on Conqueror's beam evading a ramming attack.

[4] At this velocity, they could penetrate 10 inches (254 mm) of armour if the shell struck at or near a ninety-degree angle; much less, however, in the much more likely event of an oblique impact.

[9] Immediately after the May 1885 Collingwood incident, six all steel 12-inch guns meant for land service were re-designated for use on board ships.

[11] The smaller guns were intended for use against small targets which could evade the ram and were not worth using the heavy artillery for.

The torpedo tubes - six was the greatest number carried to date by a battleship - were placed aft and were intended for use against a target placed by accident or design astern of Conqueror, when the main armament would be valueless.

[13] In March 1885 the Earl of Ravensworth, president of Institution of Naval Architects, spoke at some length about recent construction of warships.

He mentioned that in 1884, he saw the apparently finished Conqueror at Chatham, and was told that she could not be commissioned, because she was waiting for the breech screws of her guns.

However, as mentioned above, the 4 May 1886 burst of the Mark II gun on board Collingwood, made that in a practical sense, Conqueror was no longer ready for commissioning.

[18] She was paid off in July 1902 but took part in manoeuvres again during the summer of 1903; apart from that she remained swinging at anchor at Rothesay until being sold in 1907.