🔥 RARE Antique British Navy WWI Trench Art HMS QUEEN MARY Carpenter Box WOW

Description

This is a historically significant and RARE Important Antique British Navy WWI Trench Art HMS QUEEN MARY Carpenter Box, belonging to the HMS Queen Mary's head carpenter, Frederick Norman Barber or his crew, and dating to the 1910's. This large toolbox is inscribed on the front: "Ship's Carpenter to The Queen...HMS Queen Mary." This box may have even been used by the head carpenter during the construction of the Queen Mary, years prior to its actual first voyage. Approximately 10 inches tall x 30 inches wide x 10 1/4 inches deep. Good - Fair condition for 100+ years of work use, exposure to salty ocean air, and age storage (please see photos.) The lid is detached from the box, due to broken and missing hinges. I have not made any attempts to restore this piece or fix the hinges to respect its historical integrity. Acquired from an old collection in Los Angeles, California. You will not see anything like this artifact anywhere, and it is truly a rare and one-of-a-kind piece of British WWI Naval history. This artifact would eagerly be displayed at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth.  If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks!
About the HMS Queen Mary:
HMS Queen Mary
HMS
Queen Mary
was a British battlecruiser that entered service in 1913. The last battlecruiser completed for the Royal Navy prior to World War I,
it saw action during the early engagements of the conflict. Sailing with the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron,
Queen Mary
was lost at the Battle of Jutland in May 1916.
HMS Queen Mary
Nation:
Great Britain
Type:
Battlecruiser
Shipyard:
Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company
Laid Down:
March 6, 1911
Launched:
March 20, 1912
Commissioned:
September 4, 1913
Fate:
Sunk at the Battle of Jutland, May 31, 1916
Specifications
Displacement:
27,200 tons
Length:
703 ft., 6 in.
Beam:
89 ft., 0.5 in.
Draft:
32 ft., 4 in.
Propulsion:
Parsons direct-drive steam turbines, 42 Yarrow boilers, 4 x propellers
Speed:
28 knots
Range:
6,460 miles at 10 knots
Complement:
1,275 men
Armament
4 × 2: BL 13.5-inch Mk V guns
16 × 1: BL 4-inch Mk VII guns
2 × 1: 21-inch Mk II submerged torpedo tubes
Background
On October 21, 1904, Admiral John "Jackie" Fisher became First Sea Lord at the behest of King Edward VII. Tasked with reducing expenditures and modernizing the Royal Navy, he also began advocating for "all big gun" battleships. Moving forward with this initiative, Fisher had the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought built two years later. Featuring ten 12-in. guns,
Dreadnought
instantly made all existing battleships obsolete.
Fisher next desired to support this class of battleship with a new type of cruiser that sacrificed armor for speed. Dubbed battlecruisers, the first of this new class, HMS
Invincible
, was laid down in April 1906. It was Fisher's vision that battlecruisers would conduct reconnaissance, support the battle fleet, protect commerce, and pursue a defeated enemy. Over the next eight years, several battlecruisers were constructed by both the Royal Navy and the German Kaiserliche Marine.
Design
Ordered as part of the 1910–11 Naval Program along with four
King George V
-class battleships, HMS
Queen Mary
was to be the sole ship of its class. A follow-on to the earlier
Lion
-class, the new ship featured an altered interior arrangement, a redistribution of its secondary armament, and a longer hull than its predecessors. Armed with eight 13.5 in. guns in four twin turrets, the battlecruiser also carried sixteen 4 in. guns mounted in casemates. The ship's armament received direction from an experimental fire-control system designed by Arthur Pollen.
Queen Mary
's armor scheme varied little from the
Lion
s and was thickest amidships. At the waterline, between B and X turrets, the ship was protected by 9" Krupp cemented armor. This thinned moving towards the bow and stern. An upper belt of reached a thickness of 6" over the same length. Armor for the turrets consisted of 9" on the front and sides and varied from 2.5" to 3.25" on the roofs. The battlecruiser's conning tower was protected by 10" on the sides and 3" on the roof. Additionally,
Queen Mary
's armored citadel was closed off by 4" transverse bulkheads.
Power for the new design came from two paired sets of Parsons direct-drive turbines which turned four propellers. While the outboard propellers were turned by high-pressure turbines, the inner propellers were turned by low-pressure turbines. In a change from other British ships since
Dreadnought
, which had positioned the officers' quarters near their action stations amidships,
Queen Mary
saw them returned to their traditional location in the stern. As a result, it was it the first British battlecruiser to possess a stern walk.
Construction
Laid down on March 6, 1911, at Palmer Shipbuilding and Iron Company in Jarrow, the new battlecruiser was named for King George V's wife, Mary of Teck. Work progressed over the next year and
Queen Mary
slid down the ways on March 20, 1912, with Lady Alexandrina Vane-Tempest serving as the Queen's representative. Initial work on the battlecruiser ended in May 1913 and sea trials were conducted through June. Though
Queen Mary
utilized more powerful turbines than earlier battlecruisers, it only barely exceeded its design speed of 28 knots. Returning to the yard for final alterations,
Queen Mary
came under the command of Captain Reginald Hall. With the completion of the ship, it entered commission on September 4, 1913.
World War I
Assigned to Vice Admiral David Beatty's 1st Battlecruiser Squadron,
Queen Mary
commenced operations in the North Sea. The following spring saw the battlecruiser make a port call at Brest before a voyage to Russia in June. In August, with Britain's entry into World War I,
Queen Mary
and its consorts prepared for combat. On August 28, 1914, the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron sortied in support of a raid on the German coast by British light cruisers and destroyers.
In the early fighting during the Battle of Heligoland Bight, British forces had difficulty disengaging and the light cruiser HMS
Arethusa
was crippled. Under fire from the light cruisers SMS
Strassburg
and SMS
Cöln
, it called for aid from Beatty. Steaming to the rescue, his battlecruisers, including
Queen Mary
, sank
Cöln
and the light cruiser SMS
Ariadne
before covering the British withdrawal.
Refit
That December,
Queen Mary
took part in Beatty's attempt to ambush German naval forces as they conducted a raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby. In a confusing series of events, Beatty failed to bring the Germans to battle and they successfully escaped back the Jade Estuary. Withdrawn in December 1915,
Queen Mary
received a new fire control system before entering the yard for a refit the following month. As a result, it was not with Beatty for the Battle of Dogger Bank on January 24. Returning to duty in February,
Queen Mary
continued to operate with the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron through 1915 and into 1916. In May, British naval intelligence learned that the German High Seas Fleet had left port.
Loss at Jutland
Steaming in advance of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, Beatty's battlecruisers, supported by the battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron, collided with Vice Admiral Franz Hipper's battlecruisers in the opening phases of the Battle of Jutland. Engaging at 3:48 PM on May 31, the German fire proved accurate from the outset. At 3:50 PM,
Queen Mary
opened fire on SMS
Seydlitz
with its forward turrets.
As Beatty closed the range,
Queen Mary
scored two hits on its opponent and disabled one of
Seydlitz
's aft turrets. Around 4:15, HMS
Lion
came under intense fire from Hipper's ships. The smoke from this obscured HMS
Princess Royal
forcing SMS
Derfflinger
to shift its fire to
Queen Mary
. As this new enemy engaged, the British ship continued to trade hits with
Seydlitz
.
At 4:26 PM, a shell from
Derfflinger
struck
Queen Mary
detonating one or both of its forward magazines. The resulting explosion broke the battlecruiser in half near its foremast. A second shell from
Derfflinger
may have hit further aft. As the after part of the ship began to roll, it was rocked by a ​large explosion before sinking. Of
Queen Mary
's crew, 1,266 were lost while only twenty were rescued. Though Jutland resulted in a strategic victory for the British, it saw two battlecruisers, HMS
Indefatigable
and
Queen Mary
, lost with nearly all hands. An investigation into the losses led to changes in ammunition handling aboard British ships as the report showed that cordite handling practices may have contributed to the loss of the two battlecruisers.