Prior to the commissioning of H.M.S. Defiance in December 1884 for service as the Royal Navy’s Devonport Torpedo School, (The Navy’s first torpedo school had been set up on HMS Vernon at Portsmouth in 187
Prior to the commissioning of H.M.S. Defiance in December 1884 for service as the Royal Navy’s Devonport Torpedo School, (The Navy’s first torpedo school had been set up on HMS Vernon at Portsmouth in 1876) only a limited amount of instruction had been given in torpedo warfare at Devonport by a Torpedo Lieutenant on board the Perseus, which was at that time attached to Cambridge, the Gunnery School of those days.
The new torpedo school, Defiance was in the early part of 1886 moored in the Lyner estuary off Wearde Quay, in Cornwall. The Perseus, which was moored close to the Cambridge, was moved and connected to the Defiance by a bridge. Defiance had lecture rooms built on her upper deck which was completely housed in, after work part of the deck was used as a gymnasium while in the bow were the ratings’ lavatories. On the main deck aft were the officers’ accommodation, over the years this was extended for’ard as more officers’ courses were run. Towards the bow was the galley and a drying room. The ship’s company lived on the lower deck with the warrant officers’ mess at the after part on the orlop deck. Below this (the cockpit of an old line of battle ship) there was on one side a row of different patterns of above-water dis