The ship was converted into an oil jetty in 1927 and remained in that role until 1979, at which point she was donated by the Navy to The Maritime Trust for restoration.

The destruction of a wooden Ottoman fleet by a Russian fleet firing explosive shells in the Battle of Sinop, early in the Crimean War, followed by the destruction of Russian coastal fortifications during the Battle of Kinburn in the Crimean War by French armoured floating batteries, and tests against armour plates, showed the superiority of ironclads over unarmoured ships.

[3] The Admiralty initially specified that the ship should be capable of 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph), and have a full set of sails for worldwide cruising range.

Naval architect and historian David K. Brown wrote, "What made [Warrior] truly novel was the way in which these individual aspects were blended together, making her the biggest and most powerful warship in the world.

[12] The ship's length made her relatively unmanoeuvrable, making it harder for her to use her strengthened stem for ramming, an ancient tactic that was coming back into use at the time.

It had been planned to replace all the 68-pounders with the innovative 110-pounder, whose 7 in (178 mm) shell could reach 4,000 yd (3,700 m), but poor results in armour-penetration tests halted this.

[27] The majority of the crew had to do physically demanding tasks; one such duty was the raising of the heaviest manually hauled anchors in maritime history.

[7] The engine produced a total of 5,772 ihp (4,304 kW) during Warrior's sea trials on 1 April 1868 giving a speed of 14.08 kn (26.08 km/h; 16.20 mph) under steam alone.

She had the largest hoisting propeller ever made; it weighed 26 long tons (26 t),[32] and 600 men could raise it into the ship to reduce drag while under sail.

The ship was laid down some time after 6 June 1859 on the West Ham side of Bow Creek when the P&O ocean liner Seine was launched, and the slipway was reinforced to support Warrior's weight.

Indecision by the Admiralty and frequent design changes caused many delays and nearly drove her builders bankrupt before a grant of £50,000 was awarded to keep them solvent.

[38] Warrior was commissioned in August 1861 to conduct her sea trials; she was completed on 24 October[36] for £377,292,[39][Note 2] almost twice the cost of a contemporary wooden ship of the line.

Changes included the fitting of a lighter bowsprit and a shorter jib boom, along with the provision of extra heads amidships.

In March 1863, Warrior escorted the royal yacht that brought Princess Alexandra of Denmark to Britain to marry the Prince of Wales.

[46] On 19 September, she rescued the survivors of the Mersey Flat Mary Agnes, which had sunk in a collision with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's ship Snaefell at Liverpool, Lancashire.

She was recommissioned in 1867, under the command of Captain John Corbett,[48] to relieve her sister as the guardship at Queenstown in Ireland, but instead both ships participated in the Fleet Review held on 17 July in honour of the visits made by the Khedive of Egypt and the Sultan of Turkey to Britain.

The ship was part of a squadron that escorted the royal yacht HMY Victoria and Albert to Dublin in April 1868 for an official visit by the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII.

[49] From 4 to 28 July 1869, Warrior, with Black Prince and the wooden paddle frigate HMS Terrible, towed a specially built floating drydock, large enough to accommodate ironclads, 2,700 nmi (5,000 km; 3,100 mi) across the Atlantic from Madeira to Bermuda.

While returning from a joint cruise with the Mediterranean Fleet, the ship was present when HMS Captain was lost during a severe storm on 7 September.

[51] The rapid evolution of warship design, for which Warrior was partly responsible, meant that she started to become obsolete only ten years after she had been launched.

[53] In the same year, Warrior began a refit that lasted until 1875; it added a poop deck and steam capstan, a shorter bowsprit, and replacement boilers.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, she was mobilised due to concerns that the victorious Russians might be about to attack Constantinople, forcing Great Britain to intervene, but nothing transpired and Warrior cruised to Bantry Bay instead.

The Navy covered the ship's upper deck with a thick layer of concrete during one of her maintenance dockings before World War II.

[63] In the war, she served as a base ship for coastal minesweepers and, on 27 August 1942, was once again renamed as Oil Fuel Hulk C77 to release her name for use by a light aircraft carrier, HMS Warrior, then under construction.

In 1976 the Royal Navy announced that the Llanion Oil Depot would close in 1978, and the Manifold Trust began to seek funds to restore her.

[67] In August 1979 Warrior began her 800 mi (1,300 km) journey to her temporary home in the Coal Dock at Hartlepool for restoration as a museum ship.

Intensive research was done to find detailed descriptions of the ship and her equipment as of 1862 to make the restoration as accurate as economically feasible.

[74] Warrior's engines, boilers and auxiliary machinery were considered too expensive to rebuild, so replicas were built from sheet steel with a few components made from cast iron to duplicate the look of the real equipment.

[75] The Woolwich Rotunda Artillery Museum and the States of Jersey lent examples of Warrior's original primary guns, the muzzle-loading 68-pounder and the breech-loading 110-pounder, which were used as moulds for fibreglass replicas.

The ship left Hartlepool on 12 June 1987 under the command of Captain Collin Allen[77] and was towed 390 mi (630 km) to the Solent in four days.