HMS Valiant was the second ship of the armoured frigates ordered by the Royal Navy in 1861. Her builders went bankrupt shortly after she was laid down, which significantly delayed her completion. After being launched in 1863, she waited a further five years to receive her guns due to supply issues. Upon being commissioned in 1868 the ship was assigned as the First Reserve guard ship for Southern Ireland, where she remained until she was decommissioned in 1885. Valiant was hulked in 1897 as part of the stoker training school HMS Indus before becoming a storeship for kite balloons during the First World War. The ship was converted to a floating oil tank in 1926 and served in that role until sold for scrap in 1956. Design and description The Hector-class ironclads, like their immediate predecessors, the , were designed as smaller and cheaper versions of the armoured frigates. They were modified versions of the Defence-class ships with additional armour and more powerful engines. Valiant was long between perpendiculars. She had a beam of and a draft of . The ship was overweight and displaced . The hull was subdivided by watertight transverse bulkheads into 92 compartments and had a double bottom underneath the engine and boiler rooms. The ships of her class were designed with a very low centre of gravity and had a metacentric height of . While handy in manoeuvring, they rolled quite badly. Propulsion Valiant had one 2-cylinder horizontal-return connecting-rod steam engine made by Maudslay Sons & Field driving a single propeller. Six boilers provided steam to the engine at a working pressure of . The engine produced a total of . During her sea trials on 18 September 1865 Valiant had a maximum speed of . The ship carried of coal, enough to steam at full speed. The ship was barque-rigged and had a sail area of . Her funnel was semi-retractable to reduce wind resistance while under sail alone. She was designed to allow the ship's propeller to be hoisted up into the stern of the ship to reduce drag while under sail, but the hoisting gear was never fitted. Armament The armament of the Hector-class ships was intended to be 32 smoothbore, muzzle-loading 68-pounder guns, 15 on each side on the main deck and one each fore and aft as chase guns on the upper deck. This was modified during construction to eight