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HMS ''Vanguard'' was a dreadnought battleship built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. She spent her whole career assigned to the Home and Grand Fleets. Aside from participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, her service during World War I generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. Just before midnight on 9 July 1917 at Scapa Flow, ''Vanguard'' suffered an explosion, probably caused by an unnoticed stokehold fire heating cordite stored against an adjacent bulkhead in one of the two magazines which served the amidships gun turrets 'P' and 'Q'.〔http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_st_vincent_class_battleships.html〕 She sank almost instantly, killing an estimated 804 men; there were only two survivors. The site is now designated as a controlled site under the Protection of Military Remains Act. One of the casualties of the disaster was Captain Kyōsuke Eto, a military observer from the Imperial Japanese Navy, which was allied with the Royal Navy at the time through the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In terms of loss of life, the destruction of the ''Vanguard'' remains the most catastrophic accidental explosion in the history of the UK, and one of the worst accidental losses of the Royal Navy. ==Design and description== The Naval Estimates for 1907–08 presented to the House of Commons by the First Lord of the Admiralty included funding for the construction of two dreadnought battleships, or for three if no acceptable understanding could be reached with the other major naval powers at the Hague Conference. As no such understanding could be arrived at, the ''St Vincent'' class, originally planned to contain only two ships, was expanded to include ''Vanguard''.〔Parkes, p. 503〕 The design of the ships was derived from that of the previous .〔Burt, p. 75〕 ''Vanguard'' had an overall length of , a beam of ,〔Burt, pp. 75–76〕 and a normal draught of .〔Preston, p. 125〕 She displaced at normal load and at deep load. In 1910 her crew numbered 753 officers and enlisted men.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HMS Vanguard (1909)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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