HMS Terrible was when designed the largest steam-powered wooden paddle wheel frigate built for the Royal Navy.

[4] Terrible was commissioned on 5 December 1845 under the command of Captain William Ramsay and was first attached to the Channel Fleet.

On 6 November 1853, commanded by Captain James Johnstone McCleverty, she left England carrying Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, who had been appointed second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet.

[7] Terrible then joined Admiral James Dundas's fleet in the Black Sea, where she served during the Crimean War.

[9] Between 30 November 1858 and February 1859 Terrible was put at the disposal of William Gladstone for the duration of his tenure as Extraordinary Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.

[11] In 1866, commanded by Captain John Commerell, Terrible helped the SS Great Eastern to lay the fifth (and first successful) Atlantic cable.

In 1869 she was one of three ships employed to move the specially built 'Bermuda' floating dry dock across the Atlantic from Madeira to the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island, in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda.