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ORIGINAL: DBS

Royal Navy ship names were, and still are, decided by a specific Committee. They still have to be approved by the reigning monarch - after all, they are His or Her Majesty's Ships - although this is pretty much a formality these days. There is almost always a common theme within a class - sometimes an initial letter, sometimes a genre of nouns and adjectives, such as the Flower class - albeit with the possibility as ever of exceptions for particular situations. As mentioned already, HM Ships Australia, New Zealand and Malaya in the Dreadnought/First World War period were all named for the Dominions which financed their construction. The current class of destroyers - Type 42s - are named for major regional towns, but their replacments, the Type 45, are going to be named with initial Ds - Daring, Dauntless, Diamond, Dragon, Defender and Duncan. Thus you have two heroic attributes, a gem, a generic military descriptor, a mythical beast and a famous RN admiral.

Nowadays, with a smaller RN and so many names to choose from, the arguments can be quite fierce as to which to go with. For example, some are unhappy that one of the two new large carriers planned for 2012 will not be another Ark Royal. Rather, the names already chosen are HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales - the latter not used since Force Z.

Naming another ship POW has to be bad juju. BTW which Hood was the HOOD named for? the one that was blown up at Jutland or a prior one?

It was named after Samuel Hood, later Viscount Hood of Whitley.

Bio of Admiral Hood



Edit : Actually, it looks like it was named for the whole family. They were very prolific seaman! (sorry, bad pun)

HMS Hood website

BTW which Hood was the HOOD named for? the one that was blown up at Jutland or a prior one?

Actually the order was placed for HMS Hood in April 1916, the month before the gentleman in question was blown up.

Yes Irrelevant, the Admiral Hood to which I was referring (and corroberrated by the Hood wesite), is actually from the mid-1700s. It's a common mistake that many believe that it was named for the guy at Jutland.

"The Mighty Hood was not, as some believe, named after Sir Horace Hood who died at Jutland. Neither was she named after the late 1880s First Sea Lord Sir Arthur Hood of Avalon. She was in fact, named for the greatest of the naval Hoods, 1st Viscount Hood of Whitley (Lord Samuel Hood). "

-F-

Thanx for clearing that up. I remembered the Hood from the 1700s, didn't know about the one from the 1880s.

ORIGINAL: anarchyintheuk

ORIGINAL: DBS

Royal Navy ship names were, and still are, decided by a specific Committee. They still have to be approved by the reigning monarch - after all, they are His or Her Majesty's Ships - although this is pretty much a formality these days. There is almost always a common theme within a class - sometimes an initial letter, sometimes a genre of nouns and adjectives, such as the Flower class - albeit with the possibility as ever of exceptions for particular situations. As mentioned already, HM Ships Australia, New Zealand and Malaya in the Dreadnought/First World War period were all named for the Dominions which financed their construction. The current class of destroyers - Type 42s - are named for major regional towns, but their replacments, the Type 45, are going to be named with initial Ds - Daring, Dauntless, Diamond, Dragon, Defender and Duncan. Thus you have two heroic attributes, a gem, a generic military descriptor, a mythical beast and a famous RN admiral.

Nowadays, with a smaller RN and so many names to choose from, the arguments can be quite fierce as to which to go with. For example, some are unhappy that one of the two new large carriers planned for 2012 will not be another Ark Royal. Rather, the names already chosen are HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales - the latter not used since Force Z.

Naming another ship POW has to be bad juju. BTW which Hood was the HOOD named for? the one that was blown up at Jutland or a prior one?

The Juju question is interesting. Some names seem to be immune. Fro example HMS Invincible blew up with Hood on board at Jutland but HMS
Invinicible did fine in the Falklands in 1982.

Well, considering that British ship names were selected by commitee, one has to wonder....

...What were they smoking on the days they selected Dainty and Delight?

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: byron13

My favorites were the Contagious, Outrageous, and Indeterminable. I think the first two were battleships and the last was a carrier.

[8D]

I believe the names you are seeking are the "Spurious" and the "Outrageous"..., names
given to the totally under-armoured Battlecruisers Furious and Courageous when they
first arrived at Scapa Flow.

You forgot one: the full set was Curious, Spurious, and Outrageous. I don't know which was which (or if there ever was an "official unofficial" name for each), but they were the 15" (sic) light cruisers, Courageous and Glorious, and the 18" (sic sic!) lt cruiser, Furious. Sanity kicked in at the last moment, and none lasted long in their original design configuration (or, in Furious' case, at all - never had the second single 18" turret fitted)

Whilst we are on nicknames
1) explain the nicknames 'Nelsol' and 'Rodnol' for the only 2 triple turret 16" battleships ever in RN
2) Who, or what were the 'Wobbly Eight' and why?
(Name all of them!)
3) Name the participant navies, and casualties at the 'Battle of May Island'

Bonus points for other nicknames[:D]

Grrr.

I have "Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century" at home in my bathroom. I'm quite sure that it would neatly answer most, if not all of your trivia.

Alas, I am stuck at the office for another 45 minutes. So I shall have to anticipate the answers, like the rest of the unwashed masses.

-F-

ORIGINAL: Feinder

Grrr.

I have "Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century" at home in my bathroom. I'm quite sure that it would neatly answer most, if not all of your trivia.

Just because it is about ships, you don't have t read it near water![8D]

I'll be impressed if Jane's has all the answers (bit too serious?)

I guess I'll let you know in about an hour...

[:'(]

-F-

Of course have the lesser know ships.

these are "Rediculus, Repossed, Renovated, the HMS Wobbly, HMS Warm Beer, and the HMS Knickers."

Wasn't there an HMS Audacious?

The three Large Light Cruisers were called Spurious, Curious, and Outrageous. The Renowns were Refit and Repair. No respect for the effete!
I also have a Jane's Battleships in my bathroom. At least, the last 27 pages or so. (Hee!)
Every once in a while when I feel like a serious creative exercise, I'll enlist people in an effort to name a theoretical "Y" class flotilla. I don't know why the "Y" was skipped, as there are some very suitable names. It's not like "X": HMS Xenodochium, HMS Xanthacroi....
Back in the 1990's, T.D. Manning wrote some pieces for Mariner's Mirror in which he discussed RN ship naming. He then collaborated with C.F. Walker on a book called, creatively enough, British Warship Names which discusses the naming process. Anyone genuinely interested in the subject should find a copy.
For those of you simply eager for fun names, go to Ships of the Royal Navy by Colledge. I believe the first volume has been revised recently. The first volume focuses on purpose-built warships, while the second deals with small craft and various others. (The division is not always consistent.) While I agree the RN usually generated some great names, it also gave us things like HMS Gay Bruiser, HMS Three Three Three, and the very merry X MAS.
Nelsol and Rodnol: this makes sense when you realize that Prestol, Fortol, Celerol, Francol, etc were all oilers in RN service at the time. There was actually a battle in which the Germans found themselves confused--Is that an oiler over there? Yeah...No! It's Nelson. No, I think it's an oiler. No, Nelson. Oiler! Nelson! Oiler...!
There have been five Audaciouses, plus an Audacieux. The most famous is the battleship that sank under embarrassing circumstances in WWI.

'Wobbly Eight':
The Wobbly Eight
Familiar name for the eight battleships of the KING EDWARD VII class - 3rd Battle Squadron in the 1914-18 war. Unwieldy and unsteady, there were also sometimes known as the BEHEMOTHS (Job x1, 15-24). The ships were AFRICA (1905), BRITANNIA (1904), COMMONWEALTH (1903), KING EDWARD VII (1903) and ZEALANDIA (1904, ex NEW ZEALAND). (Dates in brackets are dates of launching).

From http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/static/pages/4765.html

What that page doesn't show for some reason are HMS DOMINION, HMS HIBERNIA and HMS BRITTANIA, though I don't know why.

Steve.

Battle of May Island: on 31 January, 1917, the Grand Fleet took to the seas from the Firth of Forth for an exercise. The 12th and 13th Submarine Flotillas sailed with the fleet as scouts. Due to an uncomfirmed u-boat sighting, speed was increased. As the 13th Flotilla was passing May Island, the K-13 had to swerve to avoid a couple of small patrol boats. Unfortunately, her rudder jammed and she was rammed by the K-22, leaving both subs dead in the water. The light cruiser Ithuriel (a Tolkein name?) and the rest of the 13th Flotilla turned back to help. However, the 12th FLotilla was proceeding at speed, unaware of hte disaster ahead. Their leader, the light cruiser Fearless rammed the K-17, which sank with all hands. In the confusion, the K-6 hit the k-4, leaving them both dead in the water. The K-7 managed to miss the K-6, but hit the unlucky K-4 which now sank, leaving only eight survivors. I know that over 100 men died that night, two subs sank and four were damaged, as well as the HMS Fearless.

Oilers have their funnel very close to the stern. "Nelson" and "Rodney" had such an odd profile and their funnel so far aft that some used the names "Nelsol" and "Rodnol" in memory of a class of oilers whose names all ended in "ol".

By the way, my favorite battleship losses are the "France", which hit a submerged rock and sank in 1922, and the Soviet "Novorossisk" (ex-Italian "Giulio Cesare") which was sunk by a German mine in 1955!!!

Spot on, between you.
For the Wobbly 8, they were the last pre-dreadnought class built sprcifically for RN. I have heard 2 versions for the name. The most likely is that they were very sensitive to small changes in sea or wind for some reason, and found it difficult to keep a straight course - they thus kept twitching to port and starboard instead of a dead straight course. All 8 in a line must have looked like a queue of drunks if this is the case!

The second, which is a slight variation is that they always progressed a few degrees off dead ahead, and so 'crabbed' slightly sideways through the water. In both cases, it is put down to detail design issues

Nelsol and Rodnol were semi-abusive nicknames referring to their ugliness, and likening the superstructure and funnel aft to a fleet oiler

May Island is correct, and a part (but not all) of the sorry history of the K class. The basic summing up of the design flaws of that class is 'too many d@mned holes'

OK, off topic (but then again, so was my las question): Who or what were the Forty Thieves. Clue - not a c20th question!

Got me on that one... the forty officially acceptable ship's chandlers in Portsmouth?

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Got me on that one... the forty officially acceptable ship's chandlers in Portsmouth?

Nice try, but no!