Cag wrote:
Hi All,
Hello Mr Church, there are records for Prince of Wales in the Cammell Laird Library in the archives, there are procurement details, machinery specification etc and lists of approved suppliers etc. However I've not seen all files but as far as I know there is no paint detail in the file. Interestingly a lot is about the necessity to employ and use British firms to enable recovery from the depression of the 20's and 30's. Each shipbuilder could build the engines and boilers but items like guns and turrets, armour etc were approved suppliers.
Also there is a build diary at the NMM which details hull build, but again only includes the use of Aranbee on plate joints etc and that the hull was being painted, unfortunately it does not give details of what type of paint. Obviously the ships books would have been thrown overboard or lost on sinking which would have included docking data and underwater paint manufacturers.
Perhaps once data for other large ships built at Cammell Lairds are studied (eg we know now thanks to Richard's research that Ark Royal had grey anti fouling) a pattern may reveal itself but perhaps like many other details about Prince of Wales we may have to best guess from snippets in the archives. For example the King George V ships book reveals that her main 10 ton aircraft cranes were built by Clarke Chapman, her catapult was from Mactaggart Scott, Prince of Wales procurement documents reveal that Admiralty items were to be "interchangeable with other class ships", from that we can assume Prince of Wales had the same air craft handling equipment.
From study of plans etc I know despite this interchangeability there were many differences between Prince of Wales and her sisterships, most I know, some I'm still studying, but even now things still surprise me! I know Prince of Wales main turrets came from Vickers in Barrow, and her armour came from Sheffield, her 5.25's from Scotstoun.
Hope that helps
Best wishes
Cag
Regarding anti-fouling paints of RN ships. I am currently reading "Alarm Starboard" by Geoffrey Brooke who was a Prince of Wales veteran and survivor of the sinking. His books starts prior to him joining the Prince of Wales with his time serving on the Nelson and some destroyers before being posted to Prince of Wales.
That said in his book his description of Ark Royal is "she looked massive and rather ugly" when he first saw the ship and he later describes seeing the ship pitching in heavy seas where the hull can be seen which he described as a brown colour. He also describes incidents at dry dock in Rosyth where the Prince of Wales had a hole cut in its bilge keel to remove a 15 inch shell that had not exploded. I am pretty sure at this points the colour red was mentioned but another issue is that the ship also entered dry dock in Singapore to have its hull scraped and repainted. It was definitely red at the time of sinking as he makes an emphasis of this in his book how the fact that the ship had its anti-fouling hull scraped and painted was of benefit to the survivors during the escape as they did not have to slide down a fouled hull that would have caused injury. In fact the destroyer that came alongside got snared on the battleships bilge keel as it rolled over and they tried to reverse out of there.
I am at the part of his book where he has just escaped Singapore and is on the run. I know that his letters are published at the end of the book and will keep updated as I read futher.