How Devonport Built the Grand Old Lady
Built This Way
4,147 views
On 31 October 1912, Devonport laid the keel of a battleship built around a gun that had never been fired and a fuel the Royal Navy did not yet own.
HMS Warspite was one of 5 Queen Elizabeth-class super-dreadnoughts, and the yard had to stretch its No. 3 slip from 520 to 752 feet just to hold her keel. This documentary is the 28-month Devonport build told through the machines: the 15-inch Mk I gun ordered off the drawing board in January 1912 under the cover name "14-inch Experimenta\" and not proof-fired until 6 May 1914, and the all-oil propulsion plant — 24 Yarrow boilers and Parsons direct-drive turbines rated at 75,000 shaft horsepower, designed for 25 knots — approved on 16 June 1912, before the fleet had secured the oil to run it.
We follow the wire-wound 15-inch guns, about 100 tons each and throwing a 1,920-pound shell some 18 miles; the 770-ton turrets seated into barbettes shaped around a weapon that did not yet exist; the hand-riveting of a 643-foot hull under 13-inch Krupp armour; and the launch of 26 November 1913, when the hull refused to leave the slip in front of a crowd of about 30,000 and First Lord Winston Churchill. Total cost: 2,524,148 pounds. Commissioned 8 March 1915. A little over a year later she was holed around 150 times at Jutland and steamed home — the start of a career that ran through Narvik, Calabria, Matapan and Salerno to D-Day in 1944, and to 15 battle honours, the most of any single ship in the Royal Navy. This is how Devonport built the Grand Old Lady, before she ever fired a shot.
Sources: Wikipedia ("HMS Warspite (03)", "Queen Elizabeth-class battleship", "Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines"); NavWeaps ("British 15-inch/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I"); Iain Ballantyne, Warspite (Pen & Sword).
This video is for educational and historical documentation. Archival material is used for commentary, criticism, and education.
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How Devonport Built the Grand Old Lady
Built This Way
4,147 views
On 31 October 1912, Devonport laid the keel of a battleship built around a gun that had never been fired and a fuel the Royal Navy did not yet own.
HMS Warspite was one of 5 Queen Elizabeth-class super-dreadnoughts, and the yard had to stretch its No. 3 slip from 520 to 752 feet just to hold her keel. This documentary is the 28-month Devonport build told through the machines: the 15-inch Mk I gun ordered off the drawing board in January 1912 under the cover name "14-inch Experimenta\" and not proof-fired until 6 May 1914, and the all-oil propulsion plant — 24 Yarrow boilers and Parsons direct-drive turbines rated at 75,000 shaft horsepower, designed for 25 knots — approved on 16 June 1912, before the fleet had secured the oil to run it.
We follow the wire-wound 15-inch guns, about 100 tons each and throwing a 1,920-pound shell some 18 miles; the 770-ton turrets seated into barbettes shaped around a weapon that did not yet exist; the hand-riveting of a 643-foot hull under 13-inch Krupp armour; and the launch of 26 November 1913, when the hull refused to leave the slip in front of a crowd of about 30,000 and First Lord Winston Churchill. Total cost: 2,524,148 pounds. Commissioned 8 March 1915. A little over a year later she was holed around 150 times at Jutland and steamed home — the start of a career that ran through Narvik, Calabria, Matapan and Salerno to D-Day in 1944, and to 15 battle honours, the most of any single ship in the Royal Navy. This is how Devonport built the Grand Old Lady, before she ever fired a shot.
Sources: Wikipedia ("HMS Warspite (03)", "Queen Elizabeth-class battleship", "Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines"); NavWeaps ("British 15-inch/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I"); Iain Ballantyne, Warspite (Pen & Sword).
This video is for educational and historical documentation. Archival material is used for commentary, criticism, and education.