Britain's “Grand Old Lady”

From World War One’s Battle of Jutland to the bloody her main armament. No ships in main armor belt that was 13- March 1915 with the First World the world mounted such inches thick at the waterline. War already underway. Not beaches of D-Day Normandy, this legendary battleship massive guns. Each 54-foot-long Each 700-ton main battery surprisingly, a gunnery man gun tube, weighing 100-tons, turret was sheathed in armor was her first captain — E.M. continued to prove the fighting spirit of the Royal Navy could hurl a projectile weighing ranging in thickness from Philpotts. After working up off 1940-pounds some 25,000-yards seven- to eleven-inches. The the West Irish coast, she joined and more. Eight 6-in guns to a deck was protected with a Adm. John Jellicoe’s Grand side constituted the secondary three-inch layer. To drive off Fleet at austere Scapa Flow in battery. Deep below the pestering dirigibles or aircraft the far north of Scotland. She waterline, the hull was notched (new threats in naval warfare), and her sisters, Barham, to take four 21-in submerged she would rely on two 3-in anti- Malaya, Valiant, and Queen torpedo tubes. aircraft guns. Elizabeth, were assigned to BY JAMES HUFFSTODT way down cliffside trails to gaze new Queen Elizabeth-class, HMS Warspite featured a She was commissioned on 8 R/Adm. Hugh Evans-Thomas as at this stranded piece of British represented the ultimate in n apathetic spectacle maritime history. No British battleship design for that era. greeted the curious on battleship ever fought in more First Sea Lord Winston A the afternoon of 23 April battles, or survived such Churchill marveled at the ship’s 1947 when the drifting hulk of grievous wounds. “unique combination of speed HMS Warspite grounded on the This was the HMS Warspite of and power.” rocks at Mounts Bay on the Jutland, the Second Battle of The Queen Elizabeth design Cornish coast. Narvik, Calabria, Matapan, was the product of Sir Eustace Britain’s most famous and Crete, and shore bombardments Tennyson d’Eyncourt, a relative best-loved battleship, a veteran from Albania to Normandy to of the great English poet. The of both World Wars, had broken Walcheren Island. Throughout ships in this class boasted her towlines several days before the fleet, they knew her as the unprecedented striking power, in a rough sea during a final “Old Lady,” a symbol of British armored protection, speed, and journey to the breaker’s yards naval tradition. range. The great steel hull on the Clyde, Scotland. Throughout the late 1940s, measured 600-feet long, and 90- Romantics claimed that the and early 1950s, scavengers feet across the beam. Twenty- venerable fighting ship had picked at the corpse until four Yarrow large tube oil-fired thrown herself on the rocks to nothing remained — nothing boilers powered Parsins tur- avoid an inglorious fate. For that is except memories, which bines to drive 27,500-tons of Seven ships of the Royal Navy have been named years the wreckers picked at reached back to 26 November steel at 25-knots; 3400-tons of Warspite. The origins of the name are unclear, her steel bones, while 1913 when 30,000 cheering Brits oil gave her tremendous although it is probably from Elizabethan spelling of the word “spite — i.e. “spight” — in part embody- hundreds wound their watched HMS Warspite cruising ranges. ing contempt for the Navy’s enemies, but which launched at Devonport. She, Eight 15-inch guns, mounted was also the common name for the green wood- and the other members of the in four twin-turrets, constituted pecker, thus suggesting the Warspight would poke holes in the wooden hulls of enemy ships. Until 1919, a woodpecker was used in the crests of the Imposing view of the elegant ships, but the official badge was a cannon, HMS Warspite at Valetta on although the woodpecker continued to be used on 13 January 1938. the gun muzzle plugs of the ships. Illustrated is the HMS Warspite of 1884 — an Imperieuse- class first-class-armored cruiser that was scrapped in 1905. 18 SEA CLASSICS/May 2018 seaclassicsnow.com 19.

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