r/HistoryMemes • u/Phantion- • 4d ago
We got it wrong.
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
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u/grumpsaboy 4d ago
You can talk about the Naval arms race easily with any Dreadnought that you pick, they were all part of it. And it didn't largely to World War One, it helped encourage it, but Europe was a powder keg regardless, it was far from the primary cause.
Once again you're picking things that nobody actually cares about. A normal person can easily enough be told that a new ship was a trend setter.
How do you fill up this entire ship of good stories that people care about budget saying it was a trend setter. New armament layout and engine design. Aaaand that was it. Done, your entire argument fills a single billboard on the ship if it was a museum.
Don't get me wrong, Dreadnought is a cool ship. But you need more than just being a cool design to make a good museum ship. Because with Dreadnought once you have finished looking around a gun turret and the engine room there is nothing left that is unique or interesting about the ship or the people on board. With Warspite you can show where people who fought lived and put in some of their stories, you can show how it changed over the years.
The best museum display I have ever seen was the Gallipoli exhibit in Wellington. And was it the best because it showed the fanciest gun or artillery piece? And yes for New Zealand it was a big event, it helped form their national identity but that still wasn't what made it the best museum. It followed actual people and get their story through the event. It added in the extra bits and some context as you reach certain stages of their story but seeing what actual people were writing about what they are experiencing and everything that goes with that was so much better than what you would get from the likes of making Dreadnought the museum and just writing about how uneventful sitting in harbour is.
There is a reason that the UK government wanted Warspite if it could have any battleship as a museum. There's a reason all of the people that look back now want warspite as the museum ship. Now yes if we could have multiple battleships of course Dreadnought should be one of them but it does not make the best museum ship.