HMS Pallas was a purpose-built wooden-hulled ironclad of the Royal Navy, designed as a private venture by Sir Edward Reed, and accepted by the Board of Admiralty because, as an economy measure, they wished to use up the stocks of seasoned timber held in the Woolwich Dockyard.

Pallas was the first warship in the Royal Navy to be fitted with compound expansion engines, and a high performance was expected from them; her specification claimed a speed under power of fourteen knots, which was necessary if she were to ram enemy ships who were themselves under way.

After her bow contour was hastily modified she was able to just reach 13 knots (24 km/h), which in the event of armed conflict would have been insufficient to allow her to fulfil her designed ramming function against any enemy ship with an operational power plant.

In spite of this assessment, the fact that the 12.54-knot Austro-Hungarian ironclad SMS Erzherzog Ferdinand Max (1865) was later able to successfully ram an enemy screw-propelled warship which was under way - and indeed sink it - suggests that Pallas' modest speed, while a hindrance to her employment as a ram, would not have entirely prevented an enterprising commander from taking advantage of her fixed underwater weaponry in battle, had a suitable tactical opportunity arisen.

As with many tactical aspects of early ironclad warships, the practicability of ramming in a fleet action was poorly understood by naval planners at the time of Pallas' commissioning.