HMS Howe was a 121-gun screw first-rate built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the 1850s. She and her sister HMS Victoria were the first and only British three-decker ships of the line to be designed from the start for screw propulsion. Howe never served on active duty during her lifetime. She spent her early career as the flagship of the Reserve fleet before being renamed Bulwark in 1885. The ship was renamed a second time to Impregnable the following year and became a training ship, but briefly reverted to Bulwark in 1919 before being sold for scrap in 1921.
Description
Howe measured on the gundeck and on the keel. She had a beam of , a maximum draught of , and a depth of hold of . The ship had a tonnage of 4,245 <small></small> tons burthen. The armament of the ships consisted of thirty-two shell guns on her lower gun deck, thirty 8-inch shell guns on the middle gun deck and thirty-two 32-pounder (56 cwt) guns on her upper gun deck. Between their forecastle and quarterdeck, they carried twenty-six 32-pounder (42 cwt) guns and a single 68-pounder (95 cwt) on a pivot mount. Their crew numbered 1000 officers and ratings.
thumb|Howes figurehead in [[The Lee|Hunt's Green, Buckinghamshire]]
Howe was powered by a two-cylinder, horizontal trunk steam engine that was rated at 1000 nominal horsepower; it used steam from eight fire-tube boilers to drive the single propeller shaft. Each boiler room was fitted with a funnel that could be retracted to reduce drag when under sail. The ship was laid down on 10 March 1856 at HM Dockyard, Pembroke, and launched on 7 March 1860. She was commissioned by Captain Frederick Kerr on 3 May as the flagship of Vice-Admiral Houston Stewart, commander of the reserve fleet at Plymouth. Howe was completed on 16 August and was never served on active duty for her entire career.