The World’s First Battleship & Britain’s Last Battleship

Before the HMS Warrior was restored to her full glory and installed as one of the great attractions of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on the south coast, she was sent to Hartlepool for complete renovation. While there, local artist John Wigston virtually had her to himself as an artist.

John is a maritime artist of some distinction. A dozen of his paintings were hung in the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner. He painted a series of fine pictures of HMS Warrior and the men who served in her working below decks.

HMS Warrior is a naval icon - the first ironclad, propeller-and-sail driven warship. When she was built she was the greatest warship in the world, impervious to the firepower of all other warships. She revolutionised naval warfare, was the ultimate weapon of the mid-19th Century and formed the blueprint for the great dreadnoughts that followed and whose great grey steel successors dominated war at sea throughout the 20th century.

HMS Vanguard was Britain’s last and biggest battleship. It was commissionned in 1946 and is famous for being the only British battleship “never to fire her guns in anger”.

For more artworks by John Wigston, go to his page in our webshop.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Artworks / Products, Historic, Maritime, Ships & Naval. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.