HMS Agincourt (1913)

HMS Agincourt was a dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy with an unusual history. Brazil ordered her from Armstrong Whitworth in 1911 as Rio de Janeiro, and she was laid down at the Elswick yard on 14 September 1911 and launched on 22 January 1913. The collapse of Brazil's rubber boom and a warming of relations with Argentina led to her sale while under construction to the Ottoman Empire, for 2,750,000 pounds in December 1913, and she was renamed Sultan Osman I. She was nearly complete when the First World War broke out, and the British government seized her for the Royal Navy. She mounted fourteen heavy guns in seven turrets, more than any other dreadnought battleship, and was driven by four Parsons steam turbines. She served with the Grand Fleet, fought at Jutland in 1916, was put into reserve in 1919 and was sold for scrap in 1922 to meet the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty.