What were their Lordships thinking of?

[TheRtHonSec]

HMS Dragon is in Liverpool today and is open to the public to go on board. She is the latest ship of the line and joins the fleet on Monday. But why was she given the awful name "Dragon"? Surely the admiralty could have used a name to pay tribute to a previous destroyer, e.g. HMS Glowworm rammed the Admiral Hipper in WW2. HMS Cossack captured the German surface raider Altmark, HMS Amethyst escaped the Chinese in the famous Yangtze Incident in 1949. HMS Acasta fired a torpedo into the Scharnhorst before being sunk with the loss of all but one crew member, when she could easily have turned tail and escaped behind a smoke screen. Surely these ships deserve to be remembered, if only by naming a new ship after one of them? What were their Lordships thinking of using the name Dragon? It's awful.

[FredPuli43]

Dragon? Isn't that a class of racing dinghy? May be a reflection on what their Lordships think about the present and future resources of the Royal Navy!

[humbersloop]

One of several

http://www.royalnavy....Destroyers/HMS-Dragon

[humbersloop]

Or more readily:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dragon

[FredPuli43]

She's the tenth RMS Dragon, according to wiki. The first was in 1647 and the previous one, a light cruiser, was in 1917. The first English warship with the name Dragon was operational in 1514. So the present one is not altogether exceptional. More puzzling is that list of ships with the names of flowers !

[humbersloop]

Here you go fred
http://everything2.co...ip+naming+conventions