Vickers, Sons & Maxim factory floor, circa 1906. Lined up are 7.5" Mk V single gun turrets destined for HMS Shannon (a Minotaur-class cruiser). On top of the turrets are QF 12lb guns (the two in the foreground have not had the barrels placed yet).

HMS Shannon was a Minotaur-class armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. Before the First World War, she served with the Home Fleet, generally as the flagship of a cruiser squadron. The ship remained with the Grand Fleet, as the Home Fleet was renamed when the war began, for the entire war, but only participated in a single battle, the Battle of Jutland in May 1916. Shannon spent most of the war unsuccessfully patrolling the North Sea for German warships and commerce raiders. She was paid off in 1919 and sold for scrap in 1922.