HMS Swiftsure (1870)

HMS Swiftsure was the lead ship of her class of two central-battery ironclads built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the 1870s. The ship was completed in 1872 and was briefly assigned to the Channel Fleet before being transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet where she spent most of the rest of the decade. The ironclad had a minor role in capturing a pair of rebel ships during the Spanish Cantonal Rebellion in 1873 and returning them to the central government. Swiftsure was one of the British ships that deterred the Russian Empire from attacking the Turkish capital of Constantinople during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

Her sister ship HMS Triumph was the first of the sisters to serve as the Pacific Station flagship beginning in 1878 and they rotated the assignment between them at roughly three-year intervals until Swiftsure was relieved by a different ship in 1890. In between those times, they were usually refitted and spent several years in reserve. When the Pacific Fleet assignments ended in 1890, Swiftsure spent a year as the flagship of the local reserve forces and then served as a guardship until 1893. She was subsequently relegated to the reserves until 1901 when the ship was hulked and converted into a storeship. She was renamed Orontes in 1904 and sold for scrap in 1908.