George Alexander Napier 19th century

The Black Prince was the first naval ship to boast a capstan steam engine, and the last to bear a figurehead.  This figurehead depicted the Black Prince in black armour under a golden white mantle and was fifteen feet high.  The ship was built by Napiers on the Clyde and was launched on the 27th February 1861.  Together with her sister ship, the Warrior, she was hailed as the most powerful warship in the world, impregnable to any known gun, even at a range of 200 yards, effectively making every other warship obsolete.  The Black Prince measured 380 feet in length, weighed 9210 tonnes, and had a maximun speed of 10 knots under sail and 14 under steam.  She carried twenty-six 68 pounders, ten 110 pounder breech-loaders, and four 70 pounder breech loaders.The cost of building was £377,954 and she was the largest ship built at that time. 

She was commissioned in Plymouth in May 1862 to serve with the Channel Fleet, at a time when invasion of Britain by the French was a widely held fear.  Napoleon III himself decribed the Black Prince and the Warrior as "black snakes among rabbits".  It is likely that this painting was executed following the 1st September 1863, when the Black Prince returned to the Clyde under the command of Rear-Admiral Sidney C. Dacres, together with Edgar, Emerald, Liverpool, Defence, Royal Oak, and Resistance.  These vessels can be seen in the present picture, all sailing in line, following in succession.

From 1874-75 the Black Prince was refitted and a poop and steam steering were added.  Her wooden masts were replaced by iron, after which she became the flagship of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh during a visit to Canada.  For the next seventeen years she was in the reserve at Devomport as a 1st Class armoured cruiser, becoming in 1896 a training ship at Queenstown where she was renamed Emerald in 1904.  The Black Prince was sold in 1923 after 61 years service.  The Warrior, however, survives, and after extensive restoration now lies alongside Nelson's Victory and the Mary Rose in Portsmouth.