Nelson's muzzle-loading battery and armoured hull

The crew worked the battery with block and tackle, handling two 10-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns, eight 9-inch guns, and six 20-pounders. Nelson was a large armoured cruiser whose relatively small gun count understates the destructive weight of each shell. A 10-inch projectile weighed about 410 pounds, depending on whether it was a Palliser, common, or shrapnel shell. Such a projectile would have been devastating to an earlier wooden warship. The period term armour-piercing does not map neatly onto a modern armour-piercing shell, though the shot worked against contemporary armour.