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The title is highly confusing. I believed that it was about the Queen (person) owning two physical (land) islands.

But HMS Queen Elizabeth is a ship and the islands are the two towering structures on it.

HMS, HMAS (Australia), HMCS (Canada) are fairly well understood and widely used in the press.

As a Brit, we generally understand that USS George H.W. Bush is a big ship, not a person. This seems to be the same case from the other side of the Atlantic.

Not to mention the name of the site hosting the article is "savetheroyalnavy.org".

The HMS portion makes it clear that we're talking about a boat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_Majesty%27s_Ship

Not necessarily, some of the Royal Navy's ships are islands too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_frigate

<wince>. A ship.

[Itty Bitty Ship](https://books.google.ca/books?id=7VqK0UdKHswC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA...)

I do not accept or acknowledge "a ship is bigger than a boat" hegemony.

But if you call it a ship, then it can have a boat and you don't have to say things like "they launched the boat's boat".

Submariners refer to their vessels as boats, though. So in that sense, the Royal Navy does have several rather large boats.

I'm in London and it was not clear at all, considering how pretty much anything here is HM.

I think you might be an outlier in this case. 'HMS' is pretty widely known to mean 'ship' (in the UK, at least).

But the 'having islands' adds confusion: HM QEII is known to have islands, to the layman boats are not.

It doesn't make it clear unless you know what that means. "HM" is understood to mean Her Majesty, but the "S" could mean anything to those not familiar with the abbreviation.

In that case, take the time to check what the abbreviation is?

Headlines are inherently not exhaustive in their explanation, that's kind of the point.

What's CSIS? NFB? OHIP? These are all acronyms that are geographically localized, and arguably HMS, like NHS and OBE is one of those as well.

Agreed. Adding "carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth" removes ambiguity.

"United Kingdom Royal Navy aircraft-carrier Her Majesty's Ship (HMS) Queen Elizabeth"

FTFY

If "HMS" is ambiguous, than [surely "carrier" is too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier).

Sure, I'd go with that, too.

HMS is ambiguous until you add carrier, which gives it just a hint of context.

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