When compared with Sir Phillip Watts parallel paper on the state of the Navy in 1914 there are a number of startling comparisons to be made. Sir Phillip Watts had been able to list some seventy-three battleships built or building. Every unit of this vast armada was less than twenty years old and nearly half had been built within the past decade. In addition there were ten modern battle cruisers. Sir Stanley Goodall could only list twelve battleships, ten of which dated from the naval programmes of 1912-1914. The ageing Hood was the most recent of three battle cruisers. The Ark Royal was the one new aircraft carrier. In 1939 there were five new battleships under construction, but this did not alter the fact that the Navy of the last war was mainly composed of small units, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and escort vessels.