The small wooden cruiser USS Hartford

The USS Hartford was about a 2550 ton wooden cruiser. SHe had a single screw which could propel the Hartford at up to 9-1/2 knots. She was originally armed with 20-9in MLSB guns, augmented by 2-20pdr Parrott guns and 2-12pdr guns. She served as David Farragut's flagship from January 1862. Her most notable actions were the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Mobile Bay.

A really great picture of HMS Viper at speed

This is a picture that is derived from that on Wikipedia, but is cleaned up considerably. The picture is so useful, because you could make an accurate outboard profile drawing use it.

A spycam view of the Italian cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi

This is sort of a spycam view of the Italian armoured cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi, which was well-regarded in its time. A large number of foreign sales were made of ships of this design. Two of the last were the Japanese cruisers Nisshin and Kasuga.

Look in Google Book Search for Brassey's The Naval Annual

At least the 1888 Brassey's Naval Annual can be downloaded from Google Book Search. If you are interested in the old ships from 1660 to 1905, this is a good book. As usual, the book is too hard to find. Google seems to delight in hiding full view books. I had to go deep into the search results to find this volume.

Chinese coast defense ship Ping-Yuen

The 1894 Naval Annual classes the Chinese ship Ping-Yuen as a coast defense ship. The Ping-Yuen was only 2,850 tons (a nominal figure). The ship was 200ft x 40ft x 16ft in size and had two screws. The maximum speed was only 10.5 knots. The Ping-Yuen did have an 8in belt and 1-10.2in BLR, 2-6in BLR, and 8-QF guns. The Ping-Yuen was built in 1890. This picture shows the ship in Japanese service, after being taken in the Sino-Japanese War.

The Warships blog

Alexander van Maanen has the Warships blog where he and his father Ron are posting warship-related material, including photographs. For example, there are photographs of the Dutch ironclad Schorpioen, built a La Seyne. The ships originally had 2-9in MLR and that seems to be what the Schorpioen has now.

Modified ships

I am going to try my hand at a photograph of a modified version of HMS Resistance, the ironclad British battleship. I am thinking in terms of a "modernization".