8/9 and such on engineer, would be equivalent of 10/11 on other nations. This makes UK easy for supports.
You gunners, BO, would also be receiving such bonuses. The restore -> SD, I don't care so much about b/c
you will hit that cap easily with UK. So concentrate on the respective abilities ex: 12 repair, 12 engine. Extra
repair stat is great on any sailor but with UK you should be okay. At lower levels you are just as vulnerable as
others. I think you notice support differences in the 60s so don't expect too much until then.
Maybe my suggestion would be if you have enough points, to roll for 12s of repair or engine. If you get other
sailors of 12, you can sell those for profit. In time, you will get them or be able to buy a few low levels from
the credits you earn. If you are in a hurry, you could go with mediocre stat sailors especially with UK.
But this is just my opinion of course and I await flaming from experienced players :)

Roll a BO and high stat Reload gunners and make a KM CL AA ship, specifically, the Emden. Use it to get experts for your UK crew because the Emden is the second best AA ship around. When the KM gunners are leveled high enough, you can sell em for creds/points, and make another set.

Earnings from this AAing should be spent on rolling base12 sailors, and vetting them to a certain degree. I would track my sailor's expert growth and I'd vet them after a winning game every 20 experts I gain. AAing is a great way to get around learning how to use manual aiming.

Roll your sailors with good bases right from the start, which is such an important thing whenever starting a new crew. Don't settle for less, roll 'em base12. Repair base12's are fairly easier to roll, its the engineers that are relatively hard to come by. Again, roll base12 sailors, just to stress the importance of it. Whenever my games feel laggy, i'd collect 5000 points and roll them till the system tells me that I don't have enough points left. To date (since my acct is just some 4months old) maybe I had rolled off a good 500,000 points off already. Those came back easily enough when I sold em thru trade, eclipsing base11-below sailors in the pool.

You can make a late classed gunner, holding off classing to Reload up to level65, so that your accuracy would cap earlier. This preserves the accuracy stat to a high value from 12-65, because classing at time to Reload gunner really slows down the accuracy growth. My late-classed level 67 elite Accuracy gunner (13/11) has already caught up to my lvl97 (11/11) gunner in terms of accuracy.

Go for the Revenge line and not the Renown one. The Revenge line has ships almost every 10 levels, meaning you can gain full experience. The Renown line has huge gaps in levelling, so you'll be stuck with playing it for long intervals. I took Renown tho, and had a good understanding of the lvl69 dual 15" guns and by the time I had to change, it was the lvl91 trip 16" guns already.

You will always, always be outranged by everyone, before L2, this is the life of the RN line. You'll have to be constantly aware of your ranges with everybody, and of the movements of your teammates (whether they're gonna back you up or not.)