The Battleship Builders: Constructing and Arming British Capital Ships

The launch in 1906 of HMS Dreadnought, the world s first all-big-gun battleship, rendered all existing battle fleets obsolete while at the same time wiping out the Royal Navy s numerical advantage. Britain urgently needed to build an entirely new battle fleet of these larger, more complex and more costly vessels. In this she succeeded spectacularly: in little over a decade fifty such ships were completed, almost exactly double what Germany achieved. This heroic achievement was made possible by the country s vast industrial nexus of shipbuilders, engine manufacturers, armament firms and specialist armor producers, whose contribution to the creation of the Grand Fleet is too often ignored.