In many ways the 1890s were the high noontide of Britain’s globe-spanning Empire. It was also when they suffered their worst naval disaster of the late nineteenth century with the sinking of HMS Victoria – and it occurred not as a dramatic outcome of some storm or...
During the early 1880s, Britain laid down six battleships of the Admiral class in several distinct sub-classes, all but one bearing the names of prominent admirals from the Royal Navy’s long history. The prototype was HMS Collingwood, a heavy warship laid down in 1880...
Mention HMS Hood and just one ship usually springs to mind. However, there was another HMS Hood, a battleship laid down for the Royal Navy in August 1889, which survived long enough to be given one last – and decisively final – role a few months after the...
The loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse off the Malayan coast on 10 December 1941 – described in the previous two articles – set alarm bells going in Britain. It marked the first time heavy ships had been lost to air attack, while fully operational and...
At 5.35 pm on 8 December 1941 the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse, with supporting destroyers, left Singapore to attack a Japanese seaborne invasion force that was landing in Malaya. By the early afternoon of 10 December, both ships had been sunk,...
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