Career
Ordered:
Laid down:	25 November 1909, Devonport dockyard
Launched:	6 August 1910
Commissioned:	4 June 1912
Fate:	Sold for scrap
Struck:	1924
General Characteristics
Displacement:	26,250 tons standard/29,680 tons full load
Length:	700 feet (213 m)
Beam:	88.6 feet (27 m)
Draught:	27.5 feet
Propulsion:	Parsons geared steam turbines, 4 shafts, 42 boilers, 70,000 shp
Speed:	27.5 knots
Range:	5610 nautical miles at 10 knots
Complement:	997–1,267
Armament:	Eight 13.5-inch guns, sixteen 4-inch guns, two 21-inch submerged torpedo tubes

HMS Lion was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy launched in 1910, the lead ship of her class. In World War I she fought at the battle of Heligoland Bight, 28 August 1914, and served as David Beatty's flagship at the battles of Dogger Bank, 24 January 1915 and Jutland, 31 May 1916, and sold in 1924.

At Dogger Bank she was seriously damaged by shellfire and took no part in the battle after 11:00.

At Jutland she was hit by a 12 inch (305 mm) salvo from Lützow which wrecked "Q" turret. Dozens of marines were killed, but a far larger catastrophe was averted when Major Francis Harvey, the mortally wounded turret commander, ordered the magazine doors shut and the magazine itself flooded, thereby preventing the fickle cordite propellant from setting off a massive explosion. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

See HMS Lion for other ships of the Royal Navy with this name.

External links

• Account of the battle of Jutland by Alexander Grant, a gunner aboard Lion.