HMS Hawkins

Prototype: HMS Hawkins was a Hawkins-class heavy cruiser of the Royal Navy. She was built at Chatham Dockyard and launched on 1 October 1917. With the conversion of her sister, Cavendish, to become the aircraft carrier HMS Vindictive (1918), Hawkins became the name ship of her class.

Class History: The Hawkins class was a class of five heavy cruisers of the Royal Navy designed in 1915 and constructed throughout the First World War. All ships were named after Elizabethan sea captains. The three ships remaining as cruisers in 1939 served in the Second World War, with Effingham being an early war loss through wreck; this was unusual since Raleigh was lost in a similar shipwreck on uncharted rocks in 1922 (and Vindictive was nearly lost to grounding in 1919). Vindictive, though no longer a cruiser, also served throughout the War. This class formed the basis for the definition of the maximum cruiser type under the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

Although the Hawkins class were the first heavy cruisers built for the Royal Navy, they were designed as improved versions of the Birmingham sub-class of the Town-class light cruisers, thus they were initially known as the "Improved Birmingham" type. Their lineage descended through an intermediate sketch design of 1912 known as the "Atlantic Cruiser", armed with a combination of 7.5 and 6-inch (190 and 152 mm) guns, designed to counter reported large German cruisers armed with 7-inch (170 mm) guns.

Country: The United Kingdom, made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is an island nation in northwestern Europe. England – birthplace of Shakespeare and The Beatles – is home to the capital, London, a globally influential centre of finance and culture. England is also site of Neolithic Stonehenge, Bath’s Roman spa and centuries-old universities at Oxford and Cambridge.