The windfall battleships : Agincourt, Canada, Erin, Eagle and the Balkan & Latin-American arms races /Aidan Dodson

"This book explores for the first time the full story of how two Turkish and two Chilean battleships became British capital ships after the outbreak of the First World War. Under construction by the shipbuilding giants of Armstrong and Vickers in August 1914, Sultan Osman I, Resadiye, Almirante Latorre and Almirante Cochrane became HM Ships Agincourt, Erin, Canada and Eagle. The first three served with the Grand Fleet, fighting at Jutland, while the last was transformed into a pioneering aircraft carrier, which would serve with distinction until sunk while escorting a convoy to Malta in 1942. Almirante Latorre was returned to Chile after the war, for a second career and when finally towed away for scrap in 1959, she was the penultimate survivor of Jutland. The book begins with an overview of the warships under construction around Europe for foreign customers in August 1914, and how the four ships featured were acquired by the Royal Navy. It then looks at them as manifestations of the international rivalries which directed much of the national budgets of impecunious South American and Balkan states towards armaments. Focus then switches to the three battleships in British service, and the fourth ship, never finished as a battleship, which played suck a crucial role in the development of British carrier aviation. Finally, it traces the stories of the battleships of the Latin-American naval race from the 1920s down to the 1950s. The stories and back-stories of Agincourt, Erin, Canada and Eagle embrace almost the whole of the twentieth-century battleship era, and they take us down the byways of the naval export trade, of international naval power, ranging from the Pacific to the Black Sea, and from the line of battle to mutiny and revolution."--Provided by the publisher.