HMS Onslow (1916) 15 February 1916 and completed in April 1916. Her first commander was John Tovey, (later Admiral of the Fleet). On 24 April 1916, the Easter Rising against British rule broke out in Ireland. As a response, two Infantry Brigades were ordered from Liverpool to Dublin to reinforce the British forces, with "Onslow" escorting the transports carrying these troops. She saw action at the Battle of Jutland, where "Onslow" was badly damaged, with her speed reduced to . Nevertheless, Tovey pressed home the attack against first a cruiser and then a line of battlecruisers. "Onslow" was brought back to Aberdeen despite
Easter, 1916 figures who eventually led the uprising. The deaths of these revolutionary figures at the hands of the British, however, were as much a shock to Yeats as they were to ordinary Irish people at the time, who did not expect the events to take such a bad turn so soon. Yeats was working through his feelings about the revolutionary movement in this poem, and the insistent refrain that "a terrible beauty is born" turned out to be prescient, as the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising by the British had the opposite effect to that intended. The killings