HMS Ajax (1880)

HMS Ajax was the first of the two Royal Navy Ajax class ironclad battleships to be laid down, but was completed one day later than her sister, HMS Agamemnon (1879). She carried her main artillery in centrally mounted turrets.

She was designed by Nathaniel Barnaby, working under strict Admiralty-imposed limitations, as a smaller and cheaper version of HMS Inflexible (1876); unfortunately the need, imposed by budgetary constraints, to produce a smaller ship produced a vessel with all of the shortcomings of Inflexible but with none of her virtues.

Her guns were of 12.5 inches calibre, the largest that could be accommodated on the displacement. They were carried in two double turrets mounted 'en echelon' in the waist of the ship. The intention was that, by being mounted off centre, one gun in each turret would be able to fire directly ahead or directly astern, thus allowing for at least two guns to be able to point on any bearing. In practice, firing close to the keel line caused significant blast damage to the superstructure, so in reality gunfire was limited to the broadside.

Ajax, and her sister Agamemnon, were the first British battleships to be designed without any sailing rig whatsoever.

Service history
She was commissioned on 30 April 1885 into the Special Service Squadron commanded by Admiral Hornby; in August 1885, when the Russian war scare was over, she was posted as guardship at Greenock, where she remained with occasional sea-time for manoeuvres until 1891, when she was reduced to Reserve. She was further reduced to Fleet Reserve in 1893, and to Dockyard Reserve in 1901, and was sold in 1904.