Ships designed for coastal warfare , like the floating batteries of the Crimea , or USS Monitor and her sisters , dispensed with masts from the beginning . The British HMS Devastation , started in 1869 , was the first large , ocean @-@ going ironclad to dispense with masts . Her principal role was for combat in the English Channel and other European waters ; and while her coal supplies gave her enough range to cross the Atlantic , she would have had little endurance on the other side of the ocean . The Devastation and the similar ships commissioned by the British and Russian navies in the 1870s were the exception rather than the rule . Most ironclads of the 1870s retained masts , and only the Italian navy , which during that decade was focused on short @-@ range operations in the Adriatic , built consistently mastless ironclads .