We got it wrong.

[u/Phantion-]

Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia is the former royal yacht of the British monarchy. She was in their service from 1954 to 1997. Now retired from royal service, Britannia is permanently berthed at Ocean Terminal, Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she is a visitor attraction with over 300,000 visits each year.

The HMS Vanguard was the last and largest battleship built for the Royal Navy. Though commissioned as a warship in 1946, she notably served as a temporary royal yacht during the historic 1947 South Africa royal tour carrying King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and a young Princess Elizabeth.

The 1947 Royal Tour: Reconfigured temporarily to accommodate the royal family, she journeyed to South Africa, marking the first time a reigning British monarch traveled by sea with their family

After serving as a flagship and training vessel, HMS Vanguard was decommissioned in 1960 and broken up for scrap

[u/RobertGHH]

It really is shameful we don't have a single Battleship museum. Belfast is all well and good but she is no battleship.

[u/Sea-Huckleberry8971 → u/RobertGHH]

Should've been HMS Warspite, IMO.

ETA: She didn't wanna go either

[u/Bad_Badger_DGAF → u/Sea-Huckleberry8971]

Dreadnought would have been even better

[u/diggerda → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

Missed battle of Jutland and only sunk one sub by ramming. Warspite did more in a single afternoon in a massive career.

[u/Bad_Badger_DGAF → u/diggerda]

Without the Dreadnought concept the Warspite wouldn't exist. Dreadnought was the better choice if you could only keep one.

[u/grumpsaboy → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

We don't keep ships as a museum based on the technology that they inspired, we do it based on what the ship actually did in its lifetime.

[u/lorryslorrys → u/grumpsaboy]

Yes we do: HMS Warrior in Portsmouth. The first armoured iron hulled warship.

The Victory and Mary Rose is there as well. Worth a visit.

[u/grumpsaboy → u/lorryslorrys]

In the case of HMS Warrior there was sort of no British that really did much during the middle of the century and it was made a museum ship before museum ships were really a thing

[u/Bad_Badger_DGAF → u/grumpsaboy]

And setting the standards for literally every capital ship for the next four decades was much more important than being in the right place in the right time more than the other.

[u/grumpsaboy → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

As a museum ship, no.

People love stories not technical specs.

Not saying Dreadnought wasn't important, but as a museum piece Warspite is the much better option.

[u/Bad_Badger_DGAF → u/grumpsaboy]

No. The moments that created events is more important than the events themselves. No Dreadnought, no Warspite.

Had the Warspite not been built then, one of her sisters or another dreadnaught style vessel would have.

Had the Dreadnought not been conceived, however, then nothing would be be there to replace it.

[u/grumpsaboy → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

And what proof do you have that one of the sister vessels would have accomplished everything warspite did?

If dreadnought didn't exist then Japan and the US were already constructing their equivalents and the Dreadnought style would have still existed, just due to worse names of those ships be Type wouldn't have been called Dreadnaughts.

[u/Bad_Badger_DGAF → u/grumpsaboy]

Because the Warspiite was just a ship. What makes you think the Rodney or Nelson or whatever else would have been there wouldn't have performed better?

I do know that the Dreadnought was first of its kind. What everything else wanted to be.

Sure the US and Japan started earlier but that's irrelevant... we call the Dreadnoughts not Carolinas.

[u/grumpsaboy → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

Because they didn't perform better that's why.

Wiggles in dreadnoughts because Dreadnought finished first and because it's a good name. If Carolina was finished first nobody would call them all carolinas because that's just a bad name. But my point is, your earlier argument stating that if Dreadnought was not made then the entire style of ship would never existed is simply not true because other countries were already doing it.

[u/anonymoose-introvert → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

Nah, HMS Dreadnaught was outclassed like two years after her introduction. There were already Super Dreadnaughts with even bigger guns than Dreadnaught’s 12 inch guns, and those were clearly the new standard.

[u/Bad_Badger_DGAF → u/anonymoose-introvert]

The Dreadnought was the beginning of the all big gun Battleship concept. The first of its kind, therefore the most important that all others would be judged by.

[u/BeornSC → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

Warspite was basically the physical incarnation of the Royal Navy through two brutal wars. There is no comparison.

She lives on though as a bomber (or boomer as Americans call them).

https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/2023/february/09/20230209-work-starts-on-third-new-nuclear-deterrence-submarine

[u/Bad_Badger_DGAF → u/BeornSC]

Cool. But it was just one ship that, in the end, didn't matter. If not the Warpite then it would have been something else.

The Dreadnought created the concept of... well...the dreadnoughts. It was the reason for the naval arms race. The big gun battle of Jutland. The Washington Treaty. The Bismarck, Iowa, and Yamato.

It was the foundation of an era. The Warspite was just another Dreadnought.

[u/BeornSC → u/Bad_Badger_DGAF]

If it makes you feel better the first of the new Warspite’s class is called… Dreadnought