Under a crash programme announced in December 1851 to provide the navy with a steam-driven battlefleet, the design was further modified by the new Surveyor, Captain Baldwin Walker.

She received the 780 hp engines designed and built by Robert Napier and Sons for the iron frigate Simoon, which had surrendered them on conversion to a troopship.

Under trials on 11 April 1853 she had made 10.15 knots under steam, but the second-hand engines turned out distinctly unsatisfactory, and the hurried conversion had compromised her structural strength; she thus saw no active service after the Crimean War and paid off in 1856.

[2] She served as flagship for the Commander-in-Chief from 24 October 1884 to 1886 and for Victoria's birthday celebration and fleet review at Portsmouth in 1896 "dressed smartly for the occasion" (despite having been paid off on 31 March 1888).

[3] Of her three sisters, all of which received more powerful machinery specially designed for them: The Imperial Russian Navy built a ship of its own based on the Duke of Wellington, the Imperator Nikolai I.