In the shadow of the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland, lie the centrepieces of the Royal Navy’s future power.

Aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is tied up alongside at the Rosyth Dockyard as final fitting work is carried out ahead of sea trials, and taking shape in the dry dock is HMS Prince of Wales, the second vessel in the class.

While both were put together at Rosyth, neither was truly born there. Instead, they started out as “blocks” fabricated from scratch in shipyards around the country. These huge sections were then towed to Rosyth and assembled into 65,000-tonne ships by workers from BAE Systems, Babcock and Thales who make up the Aircraft Carrier Alliance in partnership with the Ministry of Defence.