HMA No. 1 - Development

Development

In July 1908, Captain Reginald Bacon, the Royal Navy's Director of Naval Ordnance, recommended that the Navy should acquire an airship that would compete with the success of the early German rigid airships designed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. The British Government agreed that a sum of £35,000 "should be allocated to the Admiralty for the building of a dirigible balloon", and in March 1909 the armament firm of Vickers, Sons and Maxim advised that they could construct the ship for £28,000 (without goldbeater's skin gas-bags and varnished skin outer cover for which the Admiralty would be required to provide contractors), and that they would erect a constructional shed at their own expense in return for a 10-year monopoly on airship construction, similar to the submarine agreement they already had with the Crown. The contract was awarded to Vickers on 7 May 1909, with design responsibility divided between Lieutenant N. F. Usborne at the Admiralty and C. G. Robertson of Vickers; the 10-year monopoly clause was refused.

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