A Shipbuilder's Yarn places Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt inside an Admiralty design office that was producing the Royal Sovereign class and C-class cruisers before the First World War. The memoir connects technical design work to the 1909 cabinet crisis over the naval estimates. The Treasury funded five capital ships while the Admiralty judged eight advisable, prompting the slogan 'We Want Eight and We Won't Wait.' Street chants, posters, and variants such as 'five plus three equals eight' show how naval procurement became a mass political issue and how public pressure could alter expenditure.
Chapter · 13:13-15:22
Naval estimates and the We Want Eight campaign
Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt's memoir connects Admiralty design work with the 1909 political fight over whether Britain should fund five or eight capital ships.