HMS Scorpion was an ironclad turret ship built by John Laird Sons & Company, at Birkenhead, England. She was one of two sister ships secretly ordered from the Laird shipyard in 1862 by the Confederate States of America. Her true ownership was concealed by the fiction that she was being built for the government of Ottoman Egypt. In October 1863, a few months after their launch and before they could be completed, the UK Government seized the two ironclads.

In 1864 the Admiralty bought them and commissioned them into the Royal Navy: El Tousson as HMS Scorpion and El Monassir as . Scorpion had a long career as a guard ship at Bermuda, until she was lost in the North Atlantic in 1903.

Design and description North Carolina and her sister were intended, together with other warships, to break the Federal blockade of Confederate coastal cities and to hold some Northern cities for ransom.Scharf, p. 784 The ships had a length between perpendiculars of , a beam of ,Roberts, p. 20 and a draught of at deep load. They displaced . The hull was divided by 12 watertight bulkheads and the ships had a double bottom beneath the engine and boiler rooms. Their crew consisted of 152 officers and ratings.Parkes, p. 78

The Scorpion-class ships had two horizontal, direct-acting steam engines, also built by John Laird, Sons & Co., of 350 nominal horsepower. Each engine driving a single propeller shaft using steam provided by four tubular boilers. Scorpions engines produced a total of during her sea trials which gave the ship a maximum speed of .Lyon & Winfield, pp. 252–253 The ships carried of coal, enough to steam at . They were barque-rigged with three masts. The funnel was made semi-retractable to reduce wind resistance while under sail.Parkes, p. 79 To improve seaworthiness, the ships were built with a forecastle and a poop deck, although these greatly restricted the guns' ability to fire forward or aft. Amidships, they only had a freeboard of , so John Laird, Sons & Co. designed hinged iron bulwarks thick that would be lowered in combat to allow the guns to shoot.English, pp. 92–93

No ordnance had been ordered by the Confederates before the ships were seized in 1863, but in British service they mounted a pair of 9-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns in each turret. The guns could fire both solid shot and explosive shells.Roberts, p. 6

The Scorpion-class ships had a complete waterline belt of wrought iron that was thick amidships and thinned to at the bow and at the stern. It completely covered the hull from the upper deck to below the waterline. The armour protection of the turrets was quite elaborate. The inside of the turret was lined with of iron boiler plate to which T-shaped beams were bolted. The space between the beams was filled with of teak. This was covered by an iron lattice thick that was covered in turn by of teak. The iron plates were bolted to the outside using bolts that ran through to the interior iron "skin". The area around the gun ports was reinforced by 4.5-inch plates to give a total thickness of 10 inches. The turret roof consisted of T-shaped beams covered by iron plates.Putnam, p. 11

Construction and career

The Confederate States Navy ordered Scorpion from Laird Brothers in April 1862 as the Egyptian warship El Tousson. She was to have been named CSS North Carolina upon delivery to the Confederacy. The ship was launched from their shipyard in Birkenhead on 4 July 1863. Shortly afterwards Union informants planted rumours that the ship might be seized by discharged seamen from the commerce raider CSS Florida during her impending sea trials. Eager to avoid a diplomatic incident with the United States, the Admiralty ordered Captain Edward Inglefield of the ship of the line, , to support HM Customs when they were ordered to seize the ships on 9 October. He moved a gunboat to cover the exit from Lairds' fitting-out basin, patrolled the basin at night with his ship's boats and placed a detail of a dozen Royal Marines aboard with orders that no shipyard workers were permitted aboard.English, p. 84

On 20 May 1864, the Admiralty purchased the ship for the Royal NavyEnglish, p. 86 and named El Tousson after the Roman-era siege weapon,Manning & Walker, p. 397 Scorpion was the sixth ship of her name to serve in the RN.Colledge, Warlow & Bush, p. 387 The installation of her armament was delayed when the ship carrying her guns ran aground on the eastern coast of Ireland in late February 1865, although the slides for the gun carriages were mounted. En route to HM Dockyard, Portsmouth, with a temporary crew from , she accidentally collided with the merchant ship Theresa Tittens south of Holyhead early on the morning of 23 March. The ironclad had six feet of her forecastle crushed while the civilian ship had some planking damaged and some rigging torn away. No one was injured in the collision.

Commissioned in July 1865, the ship was assigned to the Channel Fleet until 1869, with time out for a refit that reduced her sailing rig from a bark to a schooner. In late 1869, she moved to Bermuda for coast and harbour defence service. Scorpion remained there for over three decades before being removed from the effective list. Scorpion was sunk as a target in 1901 but raised the next year and sold in February 1903. She was lost at sea while under tow to the U.S., where she was to be scrapped.

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