Origin
In 1908 the Lords of the Admiralty became alarmed at information reaching them which suggested that Germany, seen as the most likely opponent in any future naval conflict, was building dreadnoughts in secret in a bid to exceed the number operated by the Royal Navy. Agitation to accelerate the British dreadnought building programme was led by Admiral Fisher, the First Sea Lord at the time. There was considerable opposition to the proposal, led by Winston Churchill who was at that time President of the Board of Trade. This opposition was ultimately overruled, and Colossus and her sister ship HMS Hercules were approved for construction in the 1909 programme. She was launched on April 9, 1910 and completed and commissioned in July 1911.
Read more about this topic: HMS Colossus (1910)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)