Iron-clad warship was built at Thames Iron Works - HMS Warrior was the most powerful battleship of its day. Read all about it in this  contemporary newspaper report from the Illustrated Times of 5^th January, 1861.

THE LAUNCH OF THE WARRIOR

This formidable iron-cased frigate, the largest man-of-war ever built, and more than 1500 toms larger than the largest vessel in the world after the Great Eastern, was safely launched into the river on Saturday. Although the day was one of those spitefully cold ones in which the frost often indulges when a coming south wind has given it notice to quit, the interest of the proceedings, both national and mechanical, attracted a very large crowd of visitors of high and low degree to Bow-creek. Most of the tall chimneys of the neighbourhood had been let out for the day, and were crowded by enthusiastic amateurs in shipbuilding, who could be seen in the aerial distance blowing their fingers and waiting patiently for the interesting moment when the signal gun was to announce the starting of the marine Colossus. She looked splendid, agreeably disappointing those who had come down expecting to see a huge shapeless "steam-ram," bristling with iron plates, and who, to their surprise, found a noble ship on the finest lines, and exhibiting the most elegant proportions, looking, as the nautical men said, not half her tonnage, so symmetrical was she in form and outline. As the Warrior was an administrative child of the late Government, it was to be expected that some of its members would be present to witness the debut of their off-spring. Accordingly Sir John Pakington was there, and General Peel, Colonel Knox, and some half dozen of their friends. The Lords of the Admiralty present were Sir Richard Dundas and Captain Frederick.