HMS Belfast

HMS Belfast was launched on Saint Patrick's Day in 1938 at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Northern Ireland, the same company that built the Titanic. Anne Chamberlain, the wife of the then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, performed the naming ceremony for the ship. It was commissioned into the Royal Navy in August 1939, just days before the outbreak of the Second World War. Shortly after entering service, the cruiser hit a German magnetic mine in the Firth of Forth, which caused enough damage to keep the ship in dry dock for over two years of repairs.