Barbette ship

The barbette ship was a type of ironclad warship that was built by several navies between the 1860s and 1890s. The defining characteristic was the use of armored barbettes to partially protect the ship's main battery guns, rather than heavy gun turrets or inflexible box batteries. A large number of these ships were built by many of the world's navies in the 1870s and 1880s, though they began to be replaced by the more modern pre-dreadnought battleship type by the early 1890s.

Barbette ships saw relatively little combat during their time in service, though a small number saw combat in minor actions like the Bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 or the Battle of Fuzhou during the Sino-French War in 1884. More significant use included two Chinese ships at the Battle of the Yalu River during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. By the 1910s, barbette ships were obsolete, but a few served on into the 1920s, usually in secondary roles. By the end of the decade, most of these remaining ships had been scrapped.