HMS Nelson: Interwar Ingenuity

Constraints and compromise often push naval engineers toward original answers to seemingly simple problems. For the Royal Navy after the First World War, constraints were paramount. In 1922, Britain signed the Washington Naval Treaty: an agreement among five powers to rein in the arms race at sea. The treaty forced the abandonment of promising new capital-ship projects — already growing ever more complex and costly. Yet Britain had no intention of surrendering its great-power navy, so the Admiralty challenged designers to produce a powerful new battleship that outclassed prewar types like the Queen Elizabeth while remaining within treaty limits.