3-065-733 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

H.M.S. Duncan, flagship at Sheerness, 1874. 'The dwellers along the lower Thames and Kentish shore are looking out for the expected arrival, to-day, of the newly-married Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, who will land at Gravesend, as did the fair Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she came to be our Princess of Wales, eleven years ago. The disembarkation of their Royal Highnesses will be greeted by the firing of two Royal salutes from three of her Majesty's ships stationed in Gravesend Reach. Admiral Hastings has considerately desired the Mayor of Gravesend to give warning of this fact to the householders in that town, and they are recommended to open all their windows, lest the concussion of such heavy reports should break some of the panes of glass. One of the ships by which this double Royal salute is to be fired will be H.M.S. Duncan, the Admiral's flagship; and our Illustration of that vessel is a token of the intended naval compliment. The Duncan is an unarmoured third-rate screw steam-ship of 5724 tons (old measurement, 3727 tons) and of 800-horse power, carrying an armament of thirty guns. She is stationed at Sheerness, and bears the Admiral's flag'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.