Sails persisted on ' cruising ironclads ' for much longer . During the 1860s , the French navy had produced the Alma and La Galissonnière classes as small , long @-@ range ironclads as overseas cruisers and the British had responded with ships like HMS Swiftsure of 1870 . The Russian ship General @-@ Admiral , laid down in 1870 and completed in 1875 , was a model of a fast , long @-@ range ironclad which was likely to be able to outrun and outfight ships like Swiftsure . Even the later HMS Shannon , often described as the first British armored cruiser , would have been too slow to outrun General @-@ Admiral . While Shannon was the last British ship with a retractable propellor , later armored cruisers of the 1870s retained sailing rig , sacrificing speed under steam in consequence . It took until 1881 for the Royal Navy to lay down a long @-@ range armored warship capable of catching enemy commerce raiders , HMS Warspite , which was completed in 1888 . While sailing rigs were obsolescent for all purposes by the end of the 1880s , rigged ships were in service until the early years of the 20th century .