The technical details of British warships were recorded in a set of plans produced by the builders on completion of every ship. Known as the "as fitted" general arrangements, these drawings represented the exact appearance and fitting of the ship as it entered service. Intended to provide a permanent reference for the Admiralty and the dockyards, these highly detailed plans were drawn with exquisite skill in multicolored inks and washes that represent the acme of the draftsman's art.

Today they form part of the incomparable collection of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, which is using the latest scanning technology to make digital copies of the highest quality. This book is one of a series based entirely on these drafts which depict famous warships in an unprecedented degree of detail.

The subject of this volume was one of the last battlecruisers, elegant ships that combined a powerful armament with high speed but much criticized for their light protection. Repulse and her sister Renown were the only capital ships given sufficient priority to be designed, built, and completed during the course of World War I and substantial sums were spent on large-scale reconstruction during the 1930s. Both of these phases of the ship's life are fully documented in two separate sets of plans, which allows this novel form of anatomy to cover the whole life of the ship.