- Author
- Bastock, John
- Subjects
- None noted
- Tags
- None noted.
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- December 1971 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
DREADNAUGHT
Launched: 1906
Displacement: 17,900 tons
Length: 526 feet
Beam: 82 feet
Armament: Ten 12in. guns, twenty-seven 12- pounders, five 18in. torpedo-tubes.
Protection: Side belt and turrets up to 11-in. thick. Decks to 4-in.
Machinery: Turbines. Four screws. HP 23,000. Speed 21 knots.
The advent of the Dreadnought had as profound an impact on the world’s battle fleets as had the Warrior of 1860. Just as the Warrior had sounded the doom of the ‘wooden walls’ of her day, so the Dreadnought rendered all existing designs obsolete.
The average battleship of the 1906 period carried four 12-in. guns, 8 inches or so of armour and reciprocating engines driving her at about 18 knots. Dreadnought was so much more powerful in every way that she and the ships of her type were called ‘Dreadnoughts’, all previous vessels being referred to merely as `Battleships’. In addition to introducing the all-big-gun principle to naval design she was the first large warship to be turbine- powered, and the first British battleship to steam at 21 knots.
Dreadnought was built at Portsmouth Dockyard in the remarkably short period of 366 days. During World War I she gained the unique distinction for a battleship of ramming and sinking an enemy submarine, (U-29).
Dreadnought was the finest looking fighting ship of her time.