HMS Barfleur (1892)  HMS "Barfleur" was the second and last of the pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the 1890s. Intended for service abroad, they exchanged heavy armour and a powerful armament for high speed and long range to counter the foreign armoured cruisers then being built as commerce raiders and were rated as second-class battleships. "Barfleur" was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1895 and participated in the blockade of Crete imposed by the Great Powers after a Greek rebellion began on Crete against their Ottoman overlords in February 1897. She joined her sister ship on the China Station the following year and became the flagship of the station's second-in-command. During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, both ships contributed landing parties to participate in the Battles of the Taku Forts and of Tientsin. Already made obsolete by the increasing speeds of the cruisers the ship was designed to defend against, she was placed in reserve in 1904, although "Barfleur" often participated in the annual fleet manoeuvres. She also served as a flagship in the reserve for several years before the ship was listed for disposal in 1909. After being sold for scrap the following year, "Barfleur" got jammed underneath the piers of a swing bridge on her way to the scrapyard, forcing it to remain open and blocking traffic while she had to be freed. The "Centurion" class was designed to meet an Admiralty requirement for ships suitable for use as flagships on the China and Pacific Stations, able to defeat the most powerful foreign ships likely to be encountered there. They had an overall length of and a length between perpendiculars of , and a beam of . Their draught at normal load was and at deep load. The "Centurion"-class ships displaced at normal load and at deep load. Their steel hulls were sheathed in wood and copper to reduce biofouling. Their crews numbered 620 officers and ratings in 1895 and 600 after they were rebuilt in the early years of the 20th century. The "Centurion"s were powered by a pair of three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller, using steam provided by eight coal-fired cylindrical boilers. The engines were designed to produce a total of which was intended to allow the ships to make a speed of using natural draught. The engines proved to be slightly more powerful than anticipated and "Barfleur" reached from during her sea trials.