HMS Collingwood was the lead ship of her class of ironclad battleships built for the Royal Navy during the 1880s. The ship's essential design became the standard for most of the following British battleships. Completed in 1887, she spent the next two years in reserve before she was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet for the next eight years. After returning home in 1897, the ship spent the next six years as a guardship in Ireland. Collingwood was not significantly damaged during an accidental collision in 1899 and was paid off four years later. The ship was sold for scrap in 1909 and subsequently broken up. Background and design At the time of her design, she was not considered as being the forerunner of any class; she was designed by the Director of Naval Construction, Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, as a one-off as an answer to the French s, which carried three heavy guns on the centreline and a number of smaller pieces on the broadside. He made several proposals to the Board of Admiralty, but they were all rejected. Barnaby's final submission was inspired by the four French s laid down in 1877–1878 and was a return to the configuration of with the primary armament positioned fore and aft of the central superstructure, but with the breech-loading main armament mounted in barbettes, as per the French ships, which allowed them to be sited further above the waterline than Devastations guns. The Board modified Barnaby's design by adding of length and to guarantee a speed of at deep load. It also substituted four smaller guns for Barnaby's two guns. The additional length and the Board's acceptance of the hull lines from increased the size of the ship by . Barnaby was severely criticised, particularly by Sir Edward Reed, himself a former Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy, because Collingwoods waterline armour belt was concentrated amidships and did not extend to the ends of the ship. Reed believed that this weakness meant that the ship could be sunk from the consequent uninhibited flooding if her unarmoured ends were riddled by shellfire and open to the sea. Barnaby deliberately selected a hull shape with narrow, fine ends to limit the volume of the hull that could be flooded and situated the armoured deck below the waterline to prevent it from being pierced by enemy shells and flooding the lower part of the ironclad. Furthermore,