HMS Victoria

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