Why has the Royal Navy never completed a ship named HMS Jellicoe?
Short answerNames of admirals must pass a political test, and HMS Duncan is presented as the exceptional postwar example that did.
NotesProposed ships named Jellicoe and Beatty were renamed Anson and Howe before completion. The answer places the absence of a later HMS Jellicoe within the politics of commemorating individual admirals. It observes that HMS Duncan was the only completed post-Second World War Royal Navy ship then named for an admiral. Ship naming is therefore shown as institutional memory filtered through contemporary political acceptability rather than a simple ranking of historical importance.