Battleships
Battleships were once the most terrifying of steel sea monsters. One British
ship set the standard: HMS Dreadnought. Heavily armoured big gun battleships,
with their overwhelming fire power, became the weapon of choice for asserting
naval power.
HMS Dreadnought, an 18,110-ton battleship built at Portsmouth Dockyard, England,
represented one of the most notable design transformations of the armoured
warship era. Her "all-big-gun" main battery of ten twelve-inch guns, steam
turbine power plant
and 21-knot maximum speed so thoroughly eclipsed earlier types that subsequent
battleships were commonly known as "dreadnoughts", and the previous ones
disparaged as "pre-dreadnoughts". The swiftness of her construction was equally
remarkable. Laid
down in October 1905, she was launched in February 1906, after only four months
on the ways.
Research guide J2: Ships plans at the National Maritime Museum
