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Description:
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HMS 'Audacious' was built at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, 1911-13. She was a ‘King George V’-class ‘super-dreadnought’, so-called because this class as well as the previous ‘Orion’ class were considerably larger and more powerfully armed (all centre line 13.5-inch guns) than the original group of British dreadnoughts. She was completed in August 1913, but on 27 October the following year was sunk off the north-west coast of Ireland by mines laid by the German liner 'Berlin' which had been converted to an auxiliary minelayer. Wyllie's drawing can therefore be dated within a very narrow window of time. Wyllie used it as a study for the leading ship in his painting 'Masters of the Seas' exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1915 and now in the museum's collection (BHC4167). The ship's name is inscribed by Wyllie in the lower left corner of the drawing.
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