Warrior was built at Thames Ironworks on Bow Creek, close to the Admiralty and London's industrial infrastructure. The yard had furnaces and rolling mills sized for vessels of about 4,000 tons, along with roughly 3,000 employees by 1855. That capacity was expensive to maintain when most orders were much smaller. Unpaid bills left the company short of cash despite completed work. The firm also underestimated fixed-price Royal Navy contracts, whose agreed prices did not automatically rise when construction cost more than expected.
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Thames Ironworks capacity and contract risk
Warrior's builder had the heavy industrial plant to make an iron warship, but its finances exposed the risks behind fixed-price naval contracts.