Over the summer I discovered that all of the 15" armed battleships and battlecruisers of the Royal Navy had been drawn and uploaded to the Shipbucket archives, some as many as 12 times, but the R-class battleship HMS Ramillies was missing. This seemed like a nice opportunity to try my hand at drawing a (large) real world ship that had not been done before, not to mention the R-class being a personal favourite of mine. While it took a lot more time and effort than I had anticipated (caused in no small part by the lack of useful references for this particular ship, especially in the original state before extensive refits) I now consider her done. I wanted to draw the ship as-built, though technically speaking the pictured configuration is not correct for any particular date due to some unplanned adventures the ship went on before joining the Grand Fleet. Her rudder hit the riverbed during the launch and was damaged, caused by the ship being heavier than planned as the armour belt had to be fitted in order to add anti-torpedo bulges to the design. She was fitted out without repairing the rudder, as the shipyard did not have a sufficiently large drydock. She then sailed to Liverpool (with great difficulty), performing speed trials on the way despite not having functional rudders and running aground twice. Ramillies was repaired in Liverpool before joining the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow, but during this repair she was also repainted in dazzle camouflage. By the time the dazzle camouflage was removed after the war, other changes had been made, like flying-off platforms on B and X turrets. As Shipbucket does not allow drawings that depict damaged ships, and I don't have good enough references to work out whether any other changes were made to the ship in Liverpool, you'll have to make do with a semi-fictional, undamaged Ramillies, otherwise she is depicted as she was in May of 1917 when she first left the Beardmore shipyard.
Many thanks to VC and Karle94 for their kind help on the Shipbucket Discord!
