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HMS Victoria

A 1:1 scale recreation of the British ironclad-battleship HMS Victoria.

[Brief History]

Commissioned in 1890 in the midst of new naval innovations in ship design, she was originally to be named 'Renown', however given Queen Victoria's Golden Jubliee she was redubbed in her honor. The pomp didn't quite end there, as the vessel was also highly publicised as being the "strongest" and "fastest" ironclad afloat, although in reality she failed to live up to those standards quite spectacularly.
Victoria began her career in the Mediterranean becoming the flagship of that Fleet. However in 1892 en-route to an area off the coast of Greece to conduct excercises, she ran aground within sight of the shore. In order to save the ship, she had to be ligtened significantly--throwing everything from ammunition to coal, overboard--and towed to the harbor in Malta where she became the first ship to ever be repaired there. Shortly after that debacle in the same year [1892] and after being fully repaired, she steamed under the command of Admiral Tryon, who took the entire Mediterranean squadron out to sea for maneuevering excercises.
Now it's worth mentioning at this point that Tryon was a man who--like the deified Admiral Lord Nelson--liked to give his officers room to manever, as it were, and not be the micromanaging type. He exemplified this by often neglecting to instruct his officers during complex maneuevres and instead gave general orders and expected them to use their intuition to carry it out. It is also worth mentioning that Britain's officers had not seen significant Naval conflict since the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s and they were still using flags, as wireless communication had not yet been invented.
So, back to Victoria, she was the flagship of the squadron and the head of one of two columns sailing through the Mediterrenean. Admiral Tryon then gave orders for the fleet to perfrom a manever in which the two columns would turn into each other in succession to reverse their direction. Yes, you read that right, they were to turn INTO each other in succession, and contrary to the advice of his officers, Tryon insisted on a shorter minimum distance than was deemed safe at the time. I bet you can see where this is going. So Tryon ordered his flag officer to relay the order to each column. The Captain of the opposing column's lead ship--Markham--was justifiably concerned when recieving it and delayed raising a flag in acknowledgement, expecting it to be ammended. Admiral Tryon was having none of it, and ordered a semaphore to be sent asking "What are you waiting for?". Ebarrased, Markham ordered the maneuver immideatly--forgetting his previous
concerns.
What follows is one of the stupidest games of chicken I've ever heard of, with two 12,000 ton battleships literally steering toward each other and neither is flinching--to be fair, Captain Bourke of the Victoria asked Admiral Tryon not once, but thrice for a course correction, all denied. Moments before the collision, Admiral Tryon yelled to Markham "Go astern!", bit late if you ask my opinion. The opposing lead ship, the HMS Camperdown struck the Victoria ~4m below the waterline at about 80 degrees opening a very large hole in both ships. Victoria sank in 14 minutes--with Admiral Tryon still on board--and the Camperdown limped to the nearest port. Strongest and fastest ship, you say? Well, she certainly was when sinking, as to this day her wreck is still intact and she had sank at such a high speed that her bow literally plunged thirty meters into the seafloor.

[Details]

- Complete Naval and Weapon AI
- Top speed: 8.3m/s
- 1 x 2, 16-inch turret [12g APHE] [R < 2.8km]
- 1 x 1, 10-inch turret [6g HE] [R < 1.4km]
- 12 x 1, 6-inch guns [4g HE] [R < 1km]
- 12 x 2, 6-pound cannon [1g HE] [R < 550m]
- 3 x 1, Ram

[General Comments]

My first Royal Navy battleship! Woo! I decided on making this ship simply because I thought it looked very cool and very unconventional. Though I guess that's to be expected when you haven't been at war for damn near a
century.

Let's talk guns first, she has a massive 16 inch turret--the biggest gun on any of my ships. It does a lot of damage, but it only has two and it fires very slowly--it also sits above both magazines, so dont expect it to survive a detonation. The other turret is a generic 10-inch turret that is weakER than most of my other 10-inch designs mostly due to the small space I had to build it in, but it's not exactly weak either. The same applies for the 6-inch broadside guns, pretty standard pure HE. Now the main problem you'll have is the 6-pounders above the casemate, they were a pain. Historically it makes sense to put them there, in-game it causes some major problems given the explosive nature of...high explosive modules. I tried my best to keep them covered up and it works to an extent. However if one of those gets hit, chances are the entire 6-pounder broadside and sometimes the 6-inch broadside, will all explode--so be careful with that.

Armor is much better than my other stuff--better here meaning more realistic. The main belt has two layers of metal and one of alloy where the rest is a standard two layers of metal. The magazines have an extra layers of metal as per usual. The superstructure/casemate also has two layers of metal, which is a must since that whole area is one big citadel. Below the waterline is also two layers of metal and also...drumroll...compartmenatlized! Yes, it finally happened, I managed to put compartments and bulkheads below the waterline so as to avoid the insta-submarine mode my ships tend to go in when they are hit. It's still only a single layer of metal for the bulkheads, so be aware of that. Also, she will remain afloat with at least half of them unbreached, any more and she will slowly start going down.

Speed! She has none. Given how much of the ship is underwater, it is expected for this thing to be slow and she is. The rams still pack a punch considerding how heavy she is though. I also put drive maintainers on the bridge in case you want more variation, and she has no hydrofoils, so feel free to go in reverse to your hearts content--though the AI wont.

Hope you all enjoy this one, and expect more ships soon!