The Big Battleship

The biggest battleship of her era was originally to be called the Rio de Janeiro but due to a change of ownership became Sultan Osman I and finally HMS Agincourt. This is a look at her chequered history which started with British and German shipyards vying to build her.

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The biggest battleship of her era was originally to be called the Rio de Janerio but due to a change of ownership became Sultan Osman I and finally HMS Agincourt. In the midst of the naval arms race that culminated in World War I came the dreadnought battleship. While the great powers built many battleships, some smaller nations coveted them too. None more so than Brazil, which stunned the world in 1911 by ordering the biggest battleship yet planned. British and German shipyards struggled to secure the order to build this monstrous warship. Her completion on the Tyne, years later, took place under tragi-comic circumstances, with British bayonets barring possession to her rightful owners. She had brought two countries close to bankruptcy and had become the prize in a tense international auction, having been the object of admiration, affection and despair. She finally became HMS Agincourt and joined the British Grand Fleet, where she dwarfed her contemporaries. The "Big Battleship", or "Gin Palace" went to fight at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. When broken up after the war, she was much missed by those who served in her, the quirkiest of the Grand Fleet's battleships.