I was wondering about the first iron warships built by Lairds.
Looking at a pic at the gallery it looked like it still may have used cannons and capable of firing a broadside such as HMS Victory
could.
When were deck guns and shells introduced to warships?

Kimpri or chriskay can you remember the name of the ship in the photo as mine didn't turn out?

Was it HMS Captain

I imagine around about 1872, with the advent of Charles de Bange development of the "interrupted screw obturator". By the 1880's breech loading guns had made cannons a thing of the past. Guns could be longer in length and importantly no longer needed to be pulled back into the ship in order to be loaded, before pulled back out to be fired.

The official CL history book, 1959, 'Builders of Great Ships', gives the attached on iron warships. The 'Nemesis' and 'Guadalupe' ended with foreign buyers and the 'Birkenhead' was for the Admiralty. The famous 'Alabama' was a wooden ship.