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Music Hello everyone and welcome to history of the Second World War, episode 152, The Early War at Sea, Part 2, Building Big British Battleships.

This week, a big thank you, goes out to the new members,

Eric, Michael, James, Zhao, Peter, Tom, John, Gerald, and Molly. You can find out more over at History of the Second World War.com slash members. This is one of those episodes where there's absolutely one

pivotal source, the battleship builders constructing and arming British capital ships by Ian

Johnston and Ian Buxton. It chronicles the evolution of the British naval shipbuilding industry

from before the First World War until the end of the second. I highly

recommend it if you want a real deep dive into the behind-the-scenes actions that were so important

to the building and maintenance of the Royal Navy during the first 50 years of the 19th century.

In my view, it is a very interesting time period for the Royal Navy, as it dealt with

many challenges, especially after the First World War, as the economic landscape of the

empire quickly shifted. And while the Royal Navy would still be the largest Navy in the world in

1939, the capacity of Britain to construct large warships would peak during the First World War.

But even through all of the trials of the interwar years and then the Great Depression and all the changes that that brought,

British shipbuilding would still be able to sort of begin another massive rearmament program in 1937,

just in time for the capital ships of that program

...