Spanish ironclad Numancia


The Spanish ironclad Numancia was an armored frigate bought from France during the 1860s for service with the Royal Spanish Navy. The name was derived from the Siege of Numantia, in which Roman expansion in the Iberian Peninsula was resisted. She was the first ironclad to circumnavigate the Earth. She saw service in the Chincha Islands War and Cantonal Revolution.

Design and description

Numancia was long at the waterline, had a beam of and a draft of. She displaced and was fitted with a ram bow. Her crew consisted of 561 officers and enlisted men.
The ship was fitted with a pair of horizontal-return connecting-rod steam engines from her builder that drove one propeller shaft using steam provided by eight cylindrical boilers. The engines were rated at a total of 1,000 nominal horsepower or and gave Numancia a speed of The ironclad carried a maximum of of coal that gave her a range of at. She was fitted with a three-masted ship rig with a sail area of.
The frigate's main battery initially consisted of forty smoothbore guns mounted on the broadside, but her armament was changed around 1867 to with six and three 200 mm Armstrong-Whitworth guns, and eight Trubia guns, all of which were rifled muzzle-loading weapons. The 229 mm and 160 mm guns were situated on the gun deck while the 200 mm guns were positioned on the main deck. In 1883 Numancia was rearmed with eight Armstrong-Whitworth RML guns and seven 200 mm RMLs. When the ship was refitted in France in 1896–1898, her armament was changed to six Hontoria 160 mm and eight Canet rifled breech-loading guns and a pair of torpedo tubes.
Numancia had a complete wrought iron waterline belt of armor plates. Above the belt, the guns were protected by a strake of armor that extended the length of the ship. The deck was unarmored.

Construction and career

On 20 October 1873, during the Cantonal Revolution, Numancia collided with and sank the gunboat Fernando el Católico.
In November 1902 she was ordered to Ceuta to protect Spanish citizens in Morocco during unrest in that country.
While being towed to be scrapped in Bilbao she ran aground near Setúbal, Portugal, during a gale on 17 December 1916 en route from Cadiz.