When she was launched in 1913 the use of oil as fuel and untried 15-inch guns were revolutionary concepts in the naval arms race between Britain and Germany, a considerable risk for Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Jackie Fisher, who had advocated the design.

[7] The Queen Elizabeth class was equipped with eight breech-loading (BL) 15-inch (381 mm) Mk I guns in four twin-gun turrets, in two superfiring pairs fore and aft of the superstructure, designated 'A', 'B', 'X', and 'Y' from front to rear.

[13] After undergoing repairs for two months at Rosyth and Jarrow, she rejoined the Grand Fleet, this time as part of the new 5th Battle Squadron which had been created for Queen Elizabeth-class ships.

[20] When the squadron turned to join the Grand Fleet, the damage from a shell hitting the port-wing engine room caused Warspite's steering to jam as she attempted to avoid her sister ships Valiant and Malaya.

This decision exposed Warspite and made her a tempting target; she was hit multiple times, but inadvertently diverted attention from the armoured cruiser Warrior, which had been critically damaged whilst attacking the leading elements of the German fleet.

[25] Warspite was hit fifteen times during the battle,[26] and had 14 killed and 16 wounded; among the latter warrant officer Walter Yeo, who became one of the first men to receive facial reconstruction via plastic surgery.

The intention was for her to become the flagship of Admiral Dudley Pound's Mediterranean Fleet, but trials revealed problems with propulsion machinery and steering, a legacy of Jutland, which continued to beset Warspite and delayed her departure.

[40] These delays and the work required to rectify them also affected the crew's leave arrangements and led to some sailors airing their views in national newspapers, angering Pound.

[43] At the end of one anti-aircraft exercise, a junior midshipman independently discharged his pom-pom gun after a towing aircraft flew low overhead to display its attached target to the crew.

[44] For the remainder of the year, she cruised the Aegean, Adriatic and Mediterranean seas, leading an intensive series of fleet exercises in August due to rising international tension.

[47] When war was declared in September, the Mediterranean remained quiet and Warspite was recalled to join the Home Fleet following the loss of HMS Royal Oak.

She was diverted northwards in pursuit of the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which had sunk the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi north of the Faroe Islands, but failed to make contact.

The Italian cruisers turned away under a smoke screen while the battleships Giulio Cesare and Conte di Cavour closed on Warspite before Malaya and Royal Sovereign could catch up.

Uncertain how severe the damage was, Campioni ordered his battleships to turn away in the face of superior British numbers and they disengaged behind a smoke screen laid by Italian destroyers.

[62] In March 1941, to support the planned German invasion of the Balkans, Vice Admiral Angelo Iachino's Italian fleet, led by the battleship Vittorio Veneto, sailed to intercept Allied convoys between Egypt and Greece.

Warned of the Italian intentions by intelligence from the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Admiral Cunningham took his fleet to sea on 27 March 1941, flying his flag on Warspite.

[67] Having established by aerial reconnaissance that the rest of the Italian fleet had escaped, Warspite returned to Alexandria on 29 March, surviving air attacks without suffering casualties.

[69] This was not enough and the success of the Afrika Korps in North Africa induced Churchill to order a desperate attack on Tripoli to block the Axis supply route by sinking a battleships in the harbour.

[70] Cunningham rejected this plan, but on 21 April he sailed with Warspite to bombard the harbour in company with Barham and Valiant, the cruiser Gloucester and several destroyers.

[79] In June 1941, Warspite departed Alexandria for the Bremerton Naval Shipyard in the United States, arriving there on 11 August,[31] having travelled through the Suez Canal, across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon, stopping at Manila, then Pearl Harbor and finally Esquimalt along the way.

In March, Somerville received intelligence indicating the Japanese Fast Carrier Strike Force was heading towards the Indian Ocean and he relocated his base to Addu Atoll in the Maldives.

[88] Warspite underwent a short refit in May in another attempt to fix her steering problem, then joined Force H at Scapa Flow, departing on 9 June for Gibraltar in company with five other battleships, two carriers and twelve destroyers.

The resolve of the Italian Government had already been wavering by the time of the Allies victory in North Africa; the invasion of Sicily and aerial attacks on mainland Italy encouraged negotiations.

[86] At 0500 on 6 June 1944, Warspite was the first ship to open fire,[97] bombarding the German battery at Villerville from a position 26,000 yards offshore, to support landings by the British 3rd Division on Sword Beach.

[86] On 12 June, she returned to Portsmouth to rearm, but her guns were worn out so she was ordered to sail to Rosyth via the Straits of Dover, the first British battleship to have done so since the war began.

In company with the monitor Erebus, she carried out a preparatory bombardment of targets around Le Havre prior to Operation Astonia on 10 September, leading to the capture of the town two days later.

Her final task was to support an Anglo-Canadian operation to open up the port of Antwerp, which had been captured in September, by clearing the Scheldt Estuary of German strongholds and gun emplacements.

The salvage boat Barnet, standing guard overnight under the Warspite's bows was holed in the engine room, towed off and eventually drifted ashore at Long Rock, a few miles to the west.

Aided by her compressor and two jet engines from an experimental aircraft the hulk was finally moved 130 feet (40 m) closer to shore on Marazion beach, between St Michael's Mount and Hogus rocks.

Timbers from the ship would also be used to create commemorative souvenirs of various types, such as ashtrays and letter openers, as well as teak benches, including ones at the Castle on St Michael's Mount and in Morrab Gardens, Penzance.