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I believe the (Federal) Government should be doing everything practically possible to ensure it is preserved for the future.

— Kevin Rudd, Leader of the Federal Opposition.


As Curator of Battleship Missouri Memorial the HMVS Cerberus is clearly of tremendous historical importance not only to Australia but to Maritime history in general, and most significantly from our perspective in relation to the design evolution of battleships; of which Missouri may be said to be a worthy and direct descendant of Cerberus. Accordingly I hope every effort will be made to stabilize and save this historic ship while time remains to do so.

— Mike Weidenbach, USS Missouri Memorial Association.


One of the most important naval vessels in existence is getting perilously close to being lost forever. It is tantamount to historical vandalism by omission.

— Liberal MP Andrea Coote


A crucial link between the period of timber line-of-battle ships and the more modern battleships

— Australian Heritage Commission


One of the most historically important naval vessels in existence.

— National Trust (Victoria)


Internationally Significant

— Heritage Victoria


The RSL feels that this ship must be preserved as it is the only one of its type on earth...

— Bruce Ruxton


The unique character of this ship as the first warship built to mount turrets fore and aft...

— National Maritime Historical Society of USA


By the same token in the Cerberus we have the germ idea of the principle upon which all battleships from 1885 to 1905 were based - the placing of the main battery in armoured positions fore & aft with uninterrupted bow & stern fire & wide arcs of bearing upon either beam.

— Oscar Parkes: British Battleships, Seeley Service & Co., London, 1957


In every way the Cerberus was a complete break from established tradition with an appearance different from anything yet seen afloat.

— Oscar Parkes: British Battleships, Seeley Service & Co., London, 1957


She is a particularly interesting vessel in herself, but she is also part of the state of Victoria's history.

— Prince Phillip


...Cerberus...was the first of the newly designed fighting ships...

— P.A. Vicary, Ships Monthly, Vol. 4 No. 6, p. 204


Ships like Cerberus will strip naval warfare of its romance and panoply. It will no longer be a matter of dash & gallantry, but of science and calculation.

The Age, 10 April 1871


in some ways, Australia's most significant warship in that she represented a developmental shift away from sail power

— Colin Jones, Australian Colonial Navies, Australian War Memorial, Canberra 1986


Cerberus represented "one of the most powerful vessels for harbour defence in the world"

— Argus newspaper


The genesis of all battleship design in the period to 1905

— Spencer C Tucker, The Handbook of 19th Century Naval Warfare, Sutton, 2000


Indeed Devastation itself was an enlarged version of the coast defence Breastwork Monitor Cerberus, whose construction marked "the beginning of practical turret ship design

— John Beeler: Birth of the Battleship, US Naval Institute Press, 2001


in ... gunpower & protection would have proved more than a match for the combined British Squadron then on the Australian Station


— John Bastock: Australian Ships of War, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1975


Between the harbour defence ship & the sea-going battleship was a matter of degree - the Devastation was to develop out of Cerberus in due course.

— Oscar Parkes: British Battleships, Seeley Service & Co., London, 1957


No contemporary opponent of their (the breastwork monitors) own tonnage would have stood much chance against them. They might be said to resemble full-armed knights riding on donkeys, easy to avoid but bad to close with.


— Admiral G. A. Ballard: The Black Battlefleet, Nautical Publishing Co - 1980


The Cerberus is a unique & significant historical treasure of almost iconic value...


— Prof. R.A. Gould, Anthropology Dept. Brown University


Pride of Victoria, star of her navy,
Last iron-clad monitor left on the earth.
Now just a breakwater, rusting & waiting;
Waiting and hoping to have a re-birth.

— Dacre Smyth


In the Cerberus is seen the genesis of the design to which all battleships were built from 1885 to 1905.

— Arthur Hawkey: "Black Night off Finisterre, Airlife Publishing Ltd 1999"


"Cerberus . . . represents the beginnings of practical turret ship design . . . ".

— Robert Gardiner (ed), Conway's All the Worlds Fighting Ships 1860-1905, Conway Maritime Press, London 1979 p. 21.


The Naval Forces of Victoria
-"a formidable flotilla"

— Brassey's Naval Annual, 1884.


"She was the prototype of all modern battleships"

— J. R. Hill - Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy.


"in 1867 he produced a virtually silent revolution with the design of the coastal defence vessels Cerberus & Magdala"

— Roger Chesneau - Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905


"Of outstanding heritage significance to Australia."

— National Heritage List