HMS Minotaur was the lead ship of the armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy during the 1860s. They were the longest single-screw warships ever built. Minotaur took nearly four years between her launching and commissioning because she was used for evaluations of her armament and different sailing rigs. The ship spent the bulk of her active career as flagship of the Channel Squadron, including during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee Fleet Review in 1887. She became a training ship in 1893 and was then hulked in 1905 when she became part of the training school at Harwich. Minotaur was renamed several times before being sold for scrap in 1922 and broken up the following year. Design and description The Minotaur-class armoured frigates were essentially enlarged versions of the ironclad with heavier armament, armour, and more powerful engines. They retained the broadside ironclad layout of their predecessor, but their sides were fully armoured to protect the 50 guns they were designed to carry. Each was equipped with a plough-shaped ram that was also more prominent than that of Achilles. The Minotaur-class ships were long between perpendiculars and long overall. They had a beam of and a draft of . The ships displaced . The hull was subdivided by 15 watertight transverse bulkheads and had a double bottom underneath the engine and boiler rooms. Minotaur was considered "an excellent sea-boat and a steady gun platform, but unhandy under steam and practically unmanageable under sail" as built. Steam-powered steering improved her manoeuvring qualities significantly when it was installed in 1875 and she was judged "one of our very best manoeuvrers we have in the Navy" by Vice Admiral Philip Colomb in 1890. The ship's steadiness was partially a result of her metacentric height of . Propulsion Minotaur had a two-cylinder trunk steam engine, made by John Penn and Sons, that drove a single propeller. Ten rectangular fire-tube boilers provided steam to the engine at a working pressure of . The engine produced a total of during the ship's sea trials on 10 May 1867 and Minotaur had a maximum speed of . The ships carried of coal, enough to steam at . Minotaur was reboilered in 1893 and reached with . The ship had five masts and a sail area of . Because her propeller could only be disconnected and not hoisted up into the stern of the ship to reduce drag, Minotaur