The First Queen Elizabeth 1914-1948

摘要

The commissioning of the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth brings to mind the only other warship to bear the name, a battleship designed and built during the early part of the twentieth century, which began its career at the height of the British Empire and ended as the British and other European Empires were about to disappear forever. Named after the sixteenth century Tudor monarch, Queen Elizabeth was the lead ship of five dreadnought battleships authorised in the 1912-13 building programme, the contract for which went to Portsmouth Dockyard. On Monday 21 October 1912, at the dockyard's building slip, the wife of Admiral Sir Hedworth Meux, the C-in-C Portsmouth, laid the first keel plate.Twelve months later, on Thursday 16 October 1913, the battleship was launched, with Lady Meux again performing the ceremony. Even as late as autumn of 1913, the idea of a devastating war engulfing virtually the whole continent of Europe was still unthinkable, but some 14 months later as Queen Elizabeth neared completion, the unthinkable had happened and Europe was at war.