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H.M.S. Dreadnought - 1906

Origins - Read on. | Specifications | Ship's History | Photos

Naval Arms Race | The Great War | Postwar Developments | Links

Dreadnought, built at the Royal Portsmouth Dock Yard in a year and a day, was the apotheosis of the
all-big-gun ship. This type of battleship had been discussed widely in naval circles during the previous
decade, but building one had never been attempted. Italian naval architect Col. Vittorio Cuniberti had
broached the subject with a public proposal in 1903, published as "An Ideal Battleship for the British
Fleet" -- knowing that only the British had both the ego and the loot to realize such a ship.
Dreadnought was the especial pet project of the First Sea Lord, Adm. Jackie Fisher. To shorten the
build time for his super-ship, Fisher commandeered the eight 12" guns ordered for the Lord Nelson
and her sister the Agamemnon for use in Dreadnought, making it possible to produce her in a
build-time which remains impressive today, and made a particular bragging point for the Royal Navy
and the "advocates of a forward naval policy." This emphasis rubbed French noses in their dismal
build times, typically 6-8 years. In 1906 no other naval power could approach the Portsmouth DY's
turnaround. But to be fair, British yards of the day typically took 2-3 years to build a pre-dreadnought
-- comparable to yards in the U.S. and Russia. When the Dreadnought debuted in 1906, she caused a
sensation: so many innovations were encompassed in one vessel as to constitute an overnight naval
revolution. This revolution mandated that practically every capital ship that followed adopted, adapted,
incorporated, or elaborated upon the principles of Dreadnought's design.

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At 18,500 tons standard (21,000 tons deep-laden), the Dreadnought was nearly 20% larger than any
previous battleship. Measuring 527 feet long and 82 feet in beam, drawing 31 feet, Dreadnought used
much of the increased size for a long bow and fine entry. This broke through and rode over the waves,
keeping the guns far dryer than in the 400-foot pre-Dreadnought battleships. Dreadnought carried ten
12" guns in five twin turrets, plus (27) 12-pounders as anti-TB armament. There were also submerged
torpedo tubes. Broadside weight of metal was 21,250 lbs. Aside from the number of big guns practical
in one ship (outgunning any existing battleship by 2:1), Dreadnought's most revolutionary
development was her propulsion system: 4 Parsons steam turbine engines shafted to quad screw.
This power plant gave her a speed of 21 knots, three knots faster than her contemporaries, and with
far greater reliability, particularly at sustained high speeds. Her armor was slightly less comprehensive
than the contemporary Lord Nelsons, with 11" Krupp cemented (KC) belt on the hull, 11" on the
turrets, and 3" on the armored deck.

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Riding high without her guns and machinery installed, Dreadnought dwarfs everything afloat after
her launch at Portsmouth, an event of national importance. She was christened by King Edward
VII.

Just after commissioning in late 1906, Dreadnought went on a transatlantic shakedown cruise to test
out the ship's new systems, particularly the engines. In most respects (especially engineering), the
ship surpassed expectations, steaming 7,000 nm round trip from Gibraltar to Trinidad at an average
speed of 17.5 kts, without the turbines missing a beat. This justified Fisher's gamble on the new
technology. Henceforth all the Royal Navy's capital ships and destroyers would have the best: Parsons
turbine engines. But it was not as though the technology was untested: smaller turbines had already
seen extensive use in Royal Navy destroyers; it was merely the massive scale of the application that
was revolutionary. Not coincidentally, at precisely the same time that Dreadnought was building, the
Cunard Line had selected even more powerful turbines to propel its two record-breaking transatlantic
liners Lusitania and Mauretania. As in the Dreadnought, these ships' turbine power plants were an
unqualified success, propelling 31,000 tons of steel, satin, and mahogany at 27.5 kts. In fact, the
Mauretania made a speed record in 1909 which stood until 1928, when she was deposed by the
German Bremen.

When Dreadnought returned to Portsmouth after her transatlantic cruise, crew, builders, and backers
were jubilant. There seemed to be but one defect in the design: the foremast had been placed just
abaft #1 funnel, making it too hot to climb in many circumstances; too, funnel smoke and heat waves
frequently obscured the lookouts' view from the top. Spotting duty on the ship was not highly
regarded. Otherwise, Dreadnought was a sweeping technological success.

The ship's plan shows the layout fashionable in European navies, with main armament partly carried in
beam or wing turrets. Compare this concept with the superfiring turret layout pioneered by the
American Navy at the same time. The French, in their first generation of dreadnoughts completed early
in WWI, combined superfiring turrets fore and aft with beam turrets amidships. The beam turrets were
omitted in the next class of French dreadnoughts, and the guns up-sized to 13.4".

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Plans and Specifications

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Specifications for the Dreadnought:

Dimensions: 526' x 82' x 31' LWL: 520' Displacement: 17,900 tons std; 22,200 tons full load. Armament:
(10) 12"/45 cal. Mk X (5x2) and (24) 47mm 12-pdr guns; (5) submerged 18" torpedo tubes. Armor: All
KC type. 11"/6"/4" belt; 11" turrets; 8" barbettes; 12" main conning tower; 8" aft conning tower; 2¾"
deck. Fuel capacity: 900 tons normal; 2,000 tons maximum; 190 tons No. 2 bunker oil. Coal
consumption: 17.5 tons/hr at full power; at 10,000 HP, 11 tons/hr; at 5,000 HP (13 kts), 5½ tons/hr.
Propulsion: (19) coal-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers in 3 compartments; (4) Parsons turbines
developing 24,700 hp, shafted to quad screw. Maximum speed: 21 kts. Crew: 800.

Metric Specs:
Dimensions: 160.3m x 25m x 9.45m. LWL: 158.5m. Displacement: 17,900 tons std; 22,200 tons full load.
Armament: (10) 305 mm/45 cal. Mk X (5x2) and (24) 47mm 12-pdr guns; (5) submerged 45 cm torpedo
tubes. Armor: All KC type. 280/152/102 mm belt; 280 mm turrets; 203 mm barbettes; 305 mm main
conning tower; 203 mm aft conning tower; 70 mm deck. Fuel capacity: 900 tons normal; 2,000 tons
maximum; 190 tons No. 2 bunker oil. Coal consumption: 17.5 tons/hr at full power; at 10,000 HP, 11
tons/hr; at 5,000 HP (13 kts), 5½ tons/hr. Propulsion: (19) coal-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers in 3
compartments; (4) Parsons turbines developing 18,420 kW, shafted to quad screw. Maximum speed:
38.9 km/hr. Crew: 800.

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Detail of the Dreadnought's bridge and forward turrets.

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Ship's History
Each of Dreadnought's five turrets required a crew of 35 to operate. Working at peak efficiency, they
could loose 12 salvos in 10 minutes. Each 850-lb projectile would be hurled up to 20 miles away.
Beneath each turret was a precision engineered maze of machinery 4 decks deep, tightly packed with
state-of-the-art gear for training the turret, elevating the guns, and sending shells and powder up to
the gunhouse. But this was only the business end of the ship's brain for directing its fire: the
gentlemen of the slide rule working
the Dreyer Fire Control Table in the
Combat Communications Center,
deep below the bridge; the
gentlemen of the split-field optics
manning the rangefinders before
the bridge; and the gentlemen of
the telescope manning Director
Firing Control in the spotting top.
True, the Dreyer Table and the
Vickers Director Firing System were
only on the drawing boards when
Dreadnought debuted. But her
advent -- and the rush to build
fleets of dreadnoughts afterwards --
fostered these advancements in
naval science. They came

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simultaneously with quantum leaps in design, gunnery, and manufacturing. A joint vision of designers
and engineers took shape, for it had now became urgently necessary for fire control engineering to
tune these expensive weapons systems into efficient mobile batteries. At the same time, much of the
element of chivalry and chance which had governed naval warfare heretofore was annulled. From now
on guesswork would be eliminated. Warships would become ever more efficient killing machines.

One of the ship's controversial

features was the abandonment of the
secondary battery. Dreadnought
relied only on two dozen 47 mm
12-pounder guns, many of them
mounted on the roofs of the main
turrets. While there were good
reasons for the move away from
mixed batteries, including the inability
of spotters to tell which size shell
caused which splash while multiple
batteries were blazing away, the
turret-top placement proved
untenable due to blast when the main
guns were firing. Also there were
serious doubts as to whether 47 mm
(1.8") guns were adequate to protect
against the rapidly improving destroyers of the pre-WWI period, and in succeeding classes the
secondary battery made its reappearance: first with 4" guns in the Neptune (1911), and later 6" in HMS
Tiger (1914) and the Queen Elizabeth class super-dreadnoughts (1915). Critics of the Dreadnought,
including Beresford and Sir William White, stood vindicated on the secondary armament. If they
prevailed in this one skirmish, however, Fisher and his faction won the war: big gun, Dreadnought-type
battleships dominated naval strategy and thinking all the way through 1941.

Dreadnought's only moment of combat came not with her imposing guns, but with her sharply convex
bow. While on patrol in the Firth of Forth, near Scapa Flow, on March 18, 1915, she spied a periscope,
turned quickly and rammed the sub. Dreadnought's forefoot sliced neatly through the U-29's pressure
hull, sinking the sub immediately with all hands. Among the casualties was Germany's U-boat ace, Otto
Weddigen, who had made his name by massacreing the "Live Bait Squadron" in Sept. 1914. If
Dreadnought did not achieve further martial glory, she at least avoided becoming a U-boat victim
herself.

In fact, despite the pride-boosting knowledge that Dreadnought had initiated an entire era in battleship
development and materially boosted the prosperity of the world's armaments manufacturers (now that
every battleship had to have three times as many guns as before) -- despite that knowledge,
Dreadnought was already becoming obsolescent by the time war came, only eight years after her
thunderclap debut. After the opening phase of the War, she was deployed away from the battle fleet.
When coastal towns were bombarded by the German battlecruiser squadron several times in 1914-15,
Dreadnought was despatched to guard London. She became flagship of a squadron otherwise
composed of the eight King Edward VII class pre-dreadnoughts, her famous name lending comfort to
the civilian population at a time when the Royal Navy's prestige was somewhat tarnished in the
popular estimation.

Viewed in perspective, the building of Dreadnought was an audacious step for Britain; a step up to
"forward naval policies." While bringing the Dreadnought into being was a great technical and PR
tour-de-force, it also undermined Britain's advantage, for it rendered her large existing fleet as
obsolete the next country's. It was Britain that had invested most heavily in pre-dreadnought naval
dominance, building 51 battleships and all the facilities to support them between 1890 and 1905.
Britain thus had the most to lose; and indeed would lose most of her technical lead over Germany in
the next ten years. And it must be admitted that the scores of dreadnoughts built in the next 40 years
never lived up to their promise as the arbiters of dominance afloat. The romance of the big ship and
the big gun continued to exert a potent effect on naval officers and statesmen for decades to come,
however, despite the fact that the torpedo, mine, and submarine had superseded the big gun as the

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supreme maritime weapon. These were weapons against which the battleship had no real protection,
as many capital ships defended by ineffective "anti-torpedo nets" found to their sorrow. The mystique
of the battleship endured even into the age of air power, with deadly results for battleship crews
throughout the Second World War.

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A Troika of Dreadnought Images

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A superb photo expressing the presence of the great ship. Enlarge

The Naval Arms Race, 1906-1916

Dreadnought's starboard wing turret faces the probings of the lens. Enlarge

In the end, Dreadnought's significance lies less in her wartime exploits and more in the example she
set. As a pioneer of new frontiers, she gave her name to an entire era of naval history, an entire class
of ships, an entire arms race. For the coming of the dreadnoughts unleashed the most fevered and
ruinous phase of the naval arms race.

The rush to build more, ever more deadly

battleships led some naval professionals to recall
the easygoing days of the Nineties with
nostalgia. If the naval arms race had been on the
slow boil for some decades, the Dreadnought
turned up the heat. All the world's major navies
responded. By 1916 Britain had built a fleet of 28
dreadnoughts and nine dreadnought
battlecruisers, while Germany boasted 16
dreadnoughts and five dreadnought
battlecruisers. Britain's Asian partner, Japan, had
built two 12-gun dreadnoughts and Britain had
built her a battlecruiser, the Kongo, which set
trends in Britain itself. By 1916 Japan had laid
down five improved versions of the 14" gunned
Kongo in her own yards, and would complete two
more by 1919 for a total of eight. The United
States had completed ten dreadnoughts and was
rapidly constructing more. Soon even Argentina,
Chile and Brazil must have their dreadnoughts --
no matter if it required emptying the treasury and
raising further subscriptions to build them;
national prestige was at stake. British and
American yards were ony too glad to comply with
foreign demand: after all, the exigencies of the

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arms race had enforced a £9M deficit in Britain

by 1914 (For a more detailed look at the costs of
the dreadnought arms race in Britain and
Germany, click here). Britain's great shipyards
produced a trio of dreadnoughts for Brazil and
Chile, while the Fore River Shipyard at Quincy,
MA, U.S.A. turned out a workmanlike pair for Argentina, complete with USN-style cage masts.

So great was world demand between 1910-1914 that there was a shortage of the primary weapon -- the
12"/45 gun -- forcing lengthy waits upon Japan and other foreign customers drooling over
dreadnoughts from the sidelines. Turkey, determined to avenge its humiliating naval reverses in the
1908 and 1912-13 Balkan Wars, was one of Britain's best customers, with two huge dreadnoughts
completing just as war enveloped Europe. The Turkish crews were already in England, training on the
vessels before formally taking them over and bringing them back to Turkey. But Britain delayed the
hand-over. Citing wartime emergency, 1st Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill swooped in when
war was declared, commandeering three complete or nearly complete dreadnoughts building in British
yards. These ships were the Chilean dreadnought Almirante Latorre and both Turkish ships: the
Sultan Osman I and Reshadieh, which were to serve with the Grand Fleet as HMS Erin, with ten 13.5"
guns, and HMS Agincourt, the longest battleship of WWI, mounting fourteen 12" guns. As the Turks
had substantially paid for their two dreadnoughts -- a matter of patriotic pride in Turkey, where the
money had been raised by public subscription -- their seizure inflamed anti-British feelings in Turkey.
This made it easier for the Turks to side with the Central Powers in 1914, particularly when the
Germans threw in a new battlecruiser (together with a supporting cruiser and seasoned crews) as a
sweetener. A footnote: the Latorre served in the Grand Fleet as HMS Canada, reverting to Chilean
ownership at a bargain rate after the War. She remained the Chilean flagship until 1952.

The German dreadnought fleet steams out to meet the British at Jutland, May 1916.

Meantime in the Mediterranean, the Italians, French, and Austro-Hungarians all entered their bids in
the dreadnought competition. Italy completed six formidable dreadnoughts before the War's start;
France had one operational dreadnought by August 1914 but three more ready for trials and three
13.5" superdreadnoughts abuilding, completed by 1916; Austria-Hungary had four sister ships under
construction mounting twelve 12" guns apiece mounted in two pairs of superfiring triple turrets (4x3)
-- the Viribus Unitis class. The gunnery design of these four ships may have been cutting-edge for
1914, but some of them were poorly jobbed and plagued by delays and technical failures in
production: political expediency had dictated farming out the construction to different yards in

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different provinces, some of which had no previous experience of capital ship construction. Bottled up
in port by a severe fuel shortage, the Austrian dreadnoughts hardly took to the open seas as intended,
but instead were sunk while breaking out (Szent Istvan) or sabotaged while anchored in harbor. Russia
too made a vigorous if belated bid with its frightening-looking but thinly protected Baltic dreadnoughts
and the tragic Imperatritsa Mariya class on the Black Sea. Both Russian groups, designed by
Cuniberti, mounted four triple 12" turrets on the centerline, but without taking advantage of a
superfiring imposition. Ironically, because they were considered expendable, these countries'
pre-dreadnought battleships saw more action in WWI than most of the Mediterranean or Russian
dreadnoughts. This was not entirely true of British and German dreadnoughts, however.

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World War I and Its Aftermath, 1914-1922

The banners waved gaily in the sunshine as the armies of Europe marched to war that August long
ago. But the consequences were dreadful. By far the greatest, most heavily armed armies in history
remained deadlocked along an 1,100-mile front for almost four years on the west; more millions
perished along a similar though less active front through Russia. The slaughter on the Western Front
was unprecedented. Some two years after Verdun and the Somme, the cost of victory to the Allies was
exorbitant, but the consequences of defeat proved far worse for Germany. But the war was a
catastrophe for victor and vanquished alike. By the end of WWI military adventurism had beggared
Europe and squandered a whole generation of her youth on the battlefield. Some ten million promising
young men became stinking corpses in the trenches and no-man's-lands of the two vast battlefronts;
hundreds of thousands more in the many "side shows" such as Gallipoli, Greece, and the Mideast.
Hundreds of drowned sailors washed up on shore after the great naval battles of WWI, especially
along the coast of Jutland (Jylland) in Denmark after the titanic naval clash that bears its name. But
fate cheated the naval strategists who had emptied their treasuries to build the dreadnought fleets
(and the pre-dreadnought fleets before them).

The British Grand Fleet on maneuvers during WWI.

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Aerial view of the climactic moments of the Battle of Jutland. In foregound, HMS Warspite circles
with her steering jammed; wreck of HMS Warrior burns within her circle. The German High Seas
Fleet approaches from right, while the Grand Fleet deploys into a single line across top of picture
to block the German advance. Mushroom cloud at center marks HMS Invincible blowing up.
Chart of Maneuver Enlarge

Despite all the strategizing before war broke out, both England and Germany adopted a very
conservative naval strategy once war was a reality. Both sides aimed at conserving their huge battle
fleets in the face of mine and submarine threats. Significantly, the foremost advocates of "a forward
naval policy," Fisher in England and Tirpitz in Germany, were both muscled out of the way in 1916. In
the war, the navies played a supporting role only -- though a fleet in being was a potent intangible on
many levels. For the sailors of the dreadnought fleets, the British upheld a reasonable standard of
living through the end of the war, but by early 1917 the German sailors found their grub to consist
mainly of cabbage and root vegetables. As in Russia, discontent simmered aboard the idle ships. High
Seas Fleet activists were among the principal revolutionaries who toppled Kaiser Wilhelm in November
1918, forcing an end to the war. Along with the Kaiser went all the chief dynasties of Central and
Eastern Europe. Royal houses lost their power as surely and suddenly as the families of the fallen at
Verdun lost their loved ones. To some, the triumphant survival of 80% of the battleship fleet may have
seemed a hollow victory when set against the horrific sacrifices made in the trenches. In the aftermath
of war, dreadnought and pre-dreanought alike went to the wrecker's yard as countries repudiated
militarism.

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Developments, 1920-1945

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Signatories of the Washington Treaty for Naval Disarmament, 1922.

In truth the magnificent battleship fleets had themselves been outflanked in WWI by deadly new
developments: submarines, "aeroplanes," sophisticated mine-layers. The shimmering promise of an
easy win through mounting more big guns was discredited. Yet the mystique of the big ship survived
and flourished right through WWII, though few advances over 1918 technology came about until
1939-40 (radar). Battleships were never again constructed in such large numbers as in 1906-1920,
however. Fewer and better became the motto of navies between the wars. Before the Washington
Treaty went into effect in 1923, first-rate battleships had attained a length of 700 to 860 feet and
40-50,000 tons -- specs which would have been inconceivable in 1906 when the naval arms race ginned
up in earnest. By 1942, however, the battleship was already becoming regarded as obsolete, displaced
by the mobile projection of air power via aircraft carriers. To be sure, battleships remained important
weapons in the arsenals of the contending navies, but in a supporting role. They now served as
floating AA batteries to protect the flattops, or as mobile bombardment batteries to "soften up" enemy
positions for amphibious landings. In WWII there were few battleship-on-battleship duels: USS
Washington vs. IJN Kirishima in 1942 off Guadalcanal; and of course the actions to stop the
Bismarck's breakout to the North Atlantic in 1941 -- actions in which fleet aircraft and a Catalina flying
boat played a key role, setting up the German marauder for interception by the overwhelming strength
of the British battleship fleet.

The aircraft carrier battle group began its reign as the supreme naval weapon after Pearl Harbor -- a
reign that continues to this day with advanced weaponry that was only dreamed of in the Forties. Just
to maintain one of these battle groups costs $1B US per year. To what end remains to be seen . . .

Large Color Plan of the Dreadnought

Illustrated Lists of WWI Dreadnoughts
The Cost of the Naval Arms Race
British Grand Fleet Dreadnoughts on Maneuvers during WWI
British Grand Fleet Dreadnoughts Anchored at Scapa Flow, c. 1916
The Semi-Dreadnoughts: An Alternative to the Dreadnought (1908)
Replay the Battle of Jutland - Titanic Clash of the Dreadnought Fleets
Surrender of the German Fleet, 11/21/1918
Scuttling of the High Seas Fleet Interned at Scapa Flow, 6/21/1919
The Washington Treaty for Naval Disarmament (1922)
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