The Most Battle-Hardened Warship in History Fought Both World Wars

Описание: One ship fought at Jutland in 1916 and at Normandy in 1944. One ship survived a mine, a bomb, a guided missile, and more naval gunfire duels than any vessel afloat. One ship earned more battle honours than any other in the five-hundred-year history of the Royal Navy.Her name was HMS Warspite.Not the story of a class of ships. Not a fleet. One single warship, laid down in the age of cavalry charges and coal dust, that fought her way through virtually every theatre of both World Wars, absorbed hits from weapons spanning the entire evolution of modern warfare, and then — when they finally tried to tow her to the scrapyard — broke free of her cables and ran herself aground on the coast of England. As if she simply refused to die.No other warship in any navy, in any era, comes close.She was laid down on 31 October 1912 at Devonport Royal Dockyard, the fourth of five Queen Elizabeth-class battleships built during the furious Anglo-German naval arms race that was dragging Europe toward catastrophe. She slid into the water on 26 November 1913, christened with a name the Royal Navy had carried since the days of Elizabeth the First — possibly derived from an old English word for a woodpecker, though some trace it to "war spite," a vessel built for the express purpose of spiting the enemy. Shakespeare used the word. Seven previous ships had borne it. None of them would come close to what this eighth Warspite would endure. She was commissioned in March 1915, eight months into a world war nobody expected to last, and she carried on her crest a Latin motto that reads like a dare: Belli dura despicio.