Sir George Thurston KBE (1869 – 22 January 1950) was a British

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in the early half of the 20th century.

Life and career

Born Thomas George Owens in 1869, he trained in naval architecture in

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and

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and worked on mercantile shipbuilding. He later worked under Philip Watts at Elswick shipyard. He became the chief naval architect for Vickers, Limited from around the turn of the 20th century up to the early 1920s. Later he became the firm's naval director. He contributed to the designs of the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

battlecruiser The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attr ...

''Kongō'' and the

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battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

''Erin''. During the

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he was responsible for the large and diverse volume of construction in the Vickers yard. He changed his name by

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in 1915 to Thomas George Owens Thurston prior to attaining his knighthood. Although he took Owens as his third Christian name, his descendants conjoined his original and new surnames to take the family name of Owens-Thurston. In 1923, Thurston published a 15-page essay, "The Influence of the Washington Conference on Naval Design", in Brassey’s Naval & Shipping Annual, regarding the recent

Washington Naval Conference The Washington Naval Conference was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, DC from November 12, 1921 to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine ...

and its associated Treaty: In 1901, he married Ada King, who predeceased him in 1946. Together they had seven sons and one daughter, one of whom also predeceased him. Thurston died on 22 January 1950 at

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, aged 80.

References

External links

Portrait by Elliott & Fry

REFERENCE DOCUMENTS & RESOURCES – OFFICIAL ADMIRALTY DOCUMENTS ADM 1/8397/365: WARSHIP DESIGN, 1914-1922

The Influence of the Washington Conference on Naval Design
1869 births 1950 deaths British naval architects {{UK-engineer-stub