Thanks for this. A great Christmas present. I too am looking forward to the 5-gun version. You might give that an F name.
These ships were projected to match some reported plans for fast German ships with two For anyone 8.2in guns, but those were faulty intelligence, and never existed, so these had little chance of being built, especially as hand-loaded 7.5s on the Hawkins class needed two men and a cumbersome special grab, and so were slow to load.
Designer: Sir Eustace Henry William Tennyson d'Eyncourt (to give him his full name - but note the y)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Eustac ... st_Baronet
For anyone interested, the drawings were scans from Keith McBride's article " E's and Super E's" in Warship International No3 1996.
Those were redrawn by W. Jurens from ADM 1/9223 1564. The signature on Jurens' drawings is a facsimile (he spelled d'Eyncourt without the y) but it is a fair representation of a true signature. I have a scan of the as-fitted drawings of the G3 battlecruiser with an original signature. ETdE underlines it with a flourish!