HMS Scorpion, an ironclad turret ship built at Birkenhead, England, was one of two sister ships that the Confederate States of America secretly ordered from the Laird shipyard in 1862. To conceal her true ownership, all concerned endorsed the fiction that she was being constructed as the Egyptian warship El Tousson. She was to have been named North Carolina upon delivery to the Confederates. The British government seized the pair of ironclads in October 1863, a few months after their launch and before they could be completed.