sides. After a refit from 1874 to 1875 she was posted as Flagship, Mediterranean Fleet, until 1877. Paid off at Portsmouth, she was re-commissioned as Flagship of the Particular Service Squadron formed under the command of Admiral Astley Cooper Key at the time of the Russian war scare in 1878. She was then relegated to the post of guardship in the Clyde until 1881. She was flagship of the reserve fleet from 1881 until 1890, with a short break in 1885 when she formed part of the second Particular Service Squadron formed under Admiral Geoffrey Hornby. Modernised between 1892 and 1893, she was held in reserve at Portsmouth until 1904. From March to June 1902 she served temporarily as port guard ship at Portland with the crew of the permanent guardship HMS Revenge, which was in for a refit. In July the same year she was temporarily commissioned by Captain John de Robeck, who transferred to HMS Warrior when it had finished a refit to become depot ship. Her name changed to Calcutta in 1904, she served as depot ship at Gibraltar until 1914; she was then towed home, her engines being by this time inoperable, and became an artificers' training establishment at Portsmouth under the name of Fisgard II. By this time she was lacking masts, funnels, armament and superstructure, and was quite unrecognisable as the ship which had been widely regarded as Reed's masterpiece. Gunnery trials A trial was undertaken in 1870 to compare the accuracy and rate of fire of turret-mounted heavy guns with those in a centre-battery ship. The target was a long, high rock off Vigo. The speed of the ships was ("some accounts say stationary"). Each ship fired for five minutes, with the guns starting "loaded and very carefully trained". The guns fired Palliser shells with battering charges at a range of about . Three out of the Captain's four hits were achieved with the first salvo; firing this salvo caused the ship to roll heavily (±20°); smoke from firing made aiming difficult. The Monarch and the Hercules also did better with their first salvo, were inconvenienced by the smoke of firing, and to a lesser extent were caused to roll by firing. On the Hercules the gunsights were on the guns, and this worked better than the turret roof gunsights used by the other ships. References Bibliography Parkes, Oscar, British Battleships External links