BREAKING UP BRAVE SHIPS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14662, 4 May 1948, Page 6

BREAKING UP BRAVE SHIPS

FATE OF NELSON AND RODNEY

Records) In War of 1839-45

Queen Elizabeth, Valiant And Renown

Four of Britain’s battleships— Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Nelson, and Kcdney—and the battlecruiser Renown are to be scrapped. They have outlived their uselullness.

' They were ships of history, of famous names—and controversy, writes Michael Christiansen in the Overseas Mail.

When Rodney lay in dry dock at Rosyth, unable to float because she leaked too much, thousands of sailors would come and stare at her great rusted, bulging hull —a symbol worth £7,500,000 and weighing 35,000 tons, of the end of Britain’s battleship supremacy. Rodney and Nelson were sister ships, known in the Navy as “Queen Anne’s Mansions” because of their huge superstructures and choppedoff sterns.

Because of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 they were ships condemned to criticism from the day they were laid down. The treaty limited their weight and armament, and forced the designers to build a new type of battleship. Their guns were ail forward, mounted in turrets of three. They were the first battleships to carry 16in guns—nine of them. Steamed 503,000 Miles

Nelson was built at Newcastlc-on-Tyne and launched in 1925. For 14 years she was flagship of the Home Fleet, the great showpiece of Britain’s sea-power. At the outbreak of war she was at Scapa Flow. On one of her North Sea patrols she was damaged by a magnetic mine. In 1911 her 16in guns were in the Mediterranean protecting the Malta convoys. Her presence kept away the Italian Fleet, but torpedo bombers managed to hit her and put her out of action for several months.

, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Malaya, Penang—the Nelson steamed 500,000 miles. On September 29, 1943, the armistice with Italy was signed on board her by General Eisenhower and Marshal Badoglio. Rodney was a luckier ship, despite the fact that when she was launched it took three attempts to break the champagne bottle on her bows, which sailors say is the worst start to a ship’s life. Off Norway in 1940 she was damaged by a German bomb —the first clash of sea and air power. But though 15 men were killed when her armoured deck was pierced she was not severely damaged. When Bismarck was rushing to France after sinking, the Hood in 1941 Rodney was one of the ships which closed in on the great German battleship. Her guns fired three salvos. The first two straddled, and the third hit Bismarck, « the first blow a British warship gave the enemy. Navy’s Oiliest Battleship

Queen Elizabeth, veteran battleship of the Navy, was commissioned in 1914.

In the last war, when she was attached to the Eastern Fleet, carrying the flag of Admiral Sir James Somerville, she v/as sent to escort her Cunardsr namesake from Australia.

From 1918 to 1919 she was flagship of Admiral Beatty in the Grand Fleet. The German surrender of the Kaiser’s fleet was signed on board. In 1937 it was decided to keep he 1 ’ in the Navy—and she fought until 1944, taking part in the Far Eastern struggle. Renown was completed in 1913, and after the first world war became a floating hotel for members of the Royal Family. In 1921 the Prince of Wales sailed on his Empire tour in her; later the King and Queen, then the Duke' and Duchess of York sailed to Australia. Her first action in the second world war was with the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst, which she hit several times. She carried Mu Churchill home from the Quebec Conference in 1943, and later took him to Alexandria. Valiant was the first battleship to be launched in 1914, and took part in th® Battle of Jutland—and she was still going strong at the famous Mediterranean Battle of Matapan in 1941.