Ironclad Warship - Fleets

Fleets

While ironclads spread rapidly in navies worldwide, there were few pitched naval battles involving ironclads. Most European nations settled differences on land, and the Royal Navy struggled to maintain a deterrent parity with at least France, while providing suitable protection to Britain's commerce and colonial outposts worldwide. Ironclads remained, for the British Royal Navy, a matter of defending the British Isles first and projecting power abroad second. Those naval engagements of the latter half of the 19th-century which involved ironclads normally involved colonial actions or clashes between second-rate naval powers. But these encounters were often enough to convince British policy-makers of the increasing hazards of strictly naval foreign intervention, from Hampton Roads in the American Civil War to the hardening combined defences of naval arsenals such as Kronstadt and Cherbourg.

There were many types of ironclads:

• Seagoing ships intended to "stand in the line of battle"; the precursors of the battleship.
• Coastal service and riverine vessels, including 'floating batteries' and 'monitors'
• Vessels intended for commerce raiding or protection of commerce, called 'armoured cruisers'