# Talk:HMS Britannia (1904)

Articles on long dead battleships are not normally my thing, but I do have a certain connection with this one. My grandfather was onboard when she was torpedoed. Fortunately he survived, or I would not have been here to start the article. I hope the article doesn't trample too much on whatever conventions there are for articles of this type. -- Chris j wood 23:39, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks for writing it up. Bastie 08:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Ordered: 1903/04 Estimates. Laid down: 4 February 1902. 
Was the ship laid down before it was ordered?
--Waugh Bacon (talk) 18:53, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Well spotted. Janes certainly has a laid down date in February 1904, not 1902, so this looks like a possible typographical error. I've changed this in the article. Benea (talk) 18:53, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

The article previously had the unsourced claim that Britainnia was the last Royal Navy ship sunk in the war. This looks dubious, the minesweeper HMS Ascot (1916) was torpedoed and sunk the day after Britannia was sunk. Shrubb and Sainsbury's The Royal Navy day by day remarks that Ascot was the "last RN ship sunk in World War I" (page 313). There is a sort of source for Britannia, John Terraine's Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars 1916-1945 page 140, which quotes Newbolt (presumably his official naval history of the war) "The Britannia was the last British warship sunk by the enemy." Possibly Newbolt overlooked the relatively minor loss of the minesweeper. Though you could start making cases for the 'last major warship sunk by the enemy', it's probably best to leave this out and simply state the date, and the proximity to the armistice. Ships continued to be lost to war causes after the armistice took place, mostly to minefields, and the British cruiser HMS Cassandra was lost to a German minefield in December 1918. Benea (talk) 17:25, 17 August 2014 (UTC)