List of pre-dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy

Ships of the Royal Navy
Ships by name: A B C D–F G–H I–L M–N O–Q R–T U–Z
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The British

The Royal Sovereign class was authorised under the

The Centurion class, also designed by White, completed the initial ten new battleships called for by the Naval Defence Act 1889. They were intended to serve as

The 1892 construction programme had initially called for three new first-class battleships that were to be armed with a new 12 in (305 mm) gun, but development of the gun was delayed. At the request of the

Intended for the 1892 programme, what was initially to have been a class of three ships was delayed to the following year as the new 12-inch gun they were designed to carry had not completed testing. The design, also prepared by White, incorporated the same advances first seen with Renown in a larger first-class battleship (though White had in fact designed Majestic first). Due to public criticism,

While the Centurion class and Renown had been designed with Russian armoured cruisers in mind, the rise of the

Canopus initially served in the Mediterranean before joining her sisters on the China Station, though the Anglo-Japanese Alliance permitted their withdrawal in 1905, as with the Centurions. Upon returning to home waters, they were assigned to the Channel, Home, and Atlantic Fleets. Canopus, Glory, Ocean, and Goliath were sent to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1908–1910, thereafter being reduced to reserve status. At the start of war, the ships were mobilised and saw extensive service in various secondary theatres. Their age rendered them more expendable than the newer battleships of the Grand Fleet, and so they were used more aggressively than the vessels containing the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea. Canopus was sent to join the hunt for the German East Asia Squadron; she missed the Battle of Coronel but fired the first shots in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. Goliath was part of the force that battled the German light cruiser SMS Königsberg in German East Africa, while Albion, Vengeance, and Ocean supported operations elsewhere in Africa. Several of the ships took part in the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, where Ocean and Goliath were sunk during the fighting. The surviving ships saw little activity after 1915, though Glory was the flagship of the British North Russia Squadron in 1916. The four ships were ultimately scrapped in the post-war reduction in the fleet's strength in 1919–1922.^[25]

Formidable class

The Formidable class arose as an improvement on the Majestic design, incorporating the innovations of the Canopus class—Krupp armour and water-tube boilers—along with a new, more powerful, 40-

All three ships were sent to the Mediterranean Fleet on entering service, though in 1908, Formidable and Irresistible were recalled to British waters, serving in succession in the Channel, Home, and then Atlantic Fleets. Implacable joined them in the Atlantic Fleet the following year. They returned to the Home Fleet in 1911–1912, where they remained as part of the 5th Battle Squadron until the start of war in 1914. The 5th Squadron was stationed in the English Channel at the start of the war, and Formidable was torpedoed there in the early hours of 1 January 1915 by the U-boat U-24. Irresistible was sent to the Dardanelles campaign, where she was lost to Ottoman naval mines in March. Implacable was then sent to replace her, and she was present for the landings at Cape Helles and at Anzac Cove in April. Following the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, she was sent to Greece before returning to Britain in 1917 and reduced to a depot ship, ultimately being scrapped in 1921.^[30]

London class

The London class were, in most respects, repeats of the Formidable design, which has led some historians, like Tony Gibbons, to treat them as one class.^[34] Significant changes with the ships' armour layout have led most historians to classify them as a separate class.^[35][36][37] The first three members of the class were ordered in 1898 in response to Russian naval construction; White had been in the process of preparing the next design, which became the Duncan class, but the need to begin construction immediately led him to delay the Duncans in favour of a modified Formidable. The chief alterations lay with the arrangement of the armour in the ships' bows. Instead of terminating the heavy belt armour at the forward barbette with a transverse bulkhead, White discarded the heavy bulkhead and extended the belt all the way to the stem, albeit with reduced thickness. Two further ships, Queen and Prince of Wales, sometimes regarded as a separate class themselves, were begun in 1901 after work on the Duncan class had begun.^[35][38]

Like the Formidables, all five Londons were assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet before being recalled to Britain between 1907 and 1909, thereafter serving with the various fleets in home waters, ultimately ending up in the 5th Battle Squadron by 1912. In 1912 and 1913, London was used in experiments with a flying-off ramp for aircraft. The ships served with 5th Squadron during the first months of the war, though in November, Bulwark was destroyed by an accidental magazine explosion. Venerable was used to bombard German positions in Flanders in October and November 1914, while the other three members of the class were sent to the Dardanelles. Venerable joined them there in mid-1915, but by the end of 1916 Queen had been reduced to a depot ship and London and Venerable had returned to Britain to be decommissioned; Prince of Wales joined them there in early 1917. As with the other surviving pre-dreadnoughts, all four ships were sold for scrap in 1920.^[39][40]

Duncan class

After receiving what turned out to be overly optimistic reports of the capabilities of the new Russian Peresvet-class battleships, the Royal Navy decided to build ships that would be capable of meeting the Russian ships' reported top speed of 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph). White was compelled to reduce displacement by about 1,000 long tons (1,016 t) for budgetary reasons, which forced reductions in the scale of armour protection to meet the required speed needed to counter the Peresvets. White developed the revised bow protection scheme that had been incorporated into the Londons as a stopgap whilst he completed work on the Duncans. For much the same reason that naval officers disliked the Canopus class, the Duncans were seen to be an inferior design. Despite their defensive limitations, the Duncan-class ships were the fastest battleships in the world at the time of their completion. A total of six ships were ordered, four in 1898 and two more in 1899.^[41]

All six ships served with the Mediterranean Fleet from their commissioning until 1905, when they were recalled to the Channel Fleet.

By the early 1900s, several foreign navies began building battleships with heavy

The ships initially served with the Atlantic Fleet, with King Edward VII as its flagship, per the request of her namesake, the sitting monarch. In 1907, they were moved to the Channel Fleet, and between 1908 and 1909, they were all moved again to the Home Fleet, later being organised as the 3rd Battle Squadron, Home Fleet. Africa and Hibernia were involved in experiments with aircraft launched from flying-off decks erected on the ships, and Hibernia was the first British warship to launch an aeroplane. All of the ships were sent to the Mediterranean during the First Balkan War in 1912. During the First World War, they operated with the Grand Fleet, but they did not see action during this period. In January 1916, King Edward VII struck a mine and sank. Later that year the 3rd Squadron was detached from the fleet and dispersed. Britannia was torpedoed by UB-50 on 9 November 1918, two days before the end of the war. The six surviving members of the class were broken up in the early 1920s.^[44]

Swiftsure class

The two Swiftsure-class ships mark a significant departure from the other pre-dreadnought battleships built by Britain during the period, primarily because they had not been built for the Royal Navy. During the Argentine–Chilean naval arms race, Chile ordered the two battleships—to have been named Constitución and Libertad—from British shipyards in response to a pair of Argentinian armoured cruisers that had been ordered from Italy. Since they were intended to combat cruisers, the designers opted for a second-class ship armed with 10 in guns and a relatively heavy secondary battery of 7.5 in (190 mm) guns. Britain brokered the Pacts of May that ended the race. After Russia sought to purchase Chile's battleships, Britain intervened and bought them to prevent the Russians from strengthening their fleet at the expense of Britain's ally Japan. Relatively minor work was required to bring them up to British standards, primarily centring around modifying the guns to accept British ammunition.^[47][48]

The two ships, renamed

Developments in naval gunnery and torpedo technology were pushing expected battle ranges to greater distances in the early 1900s, since effective fire could be opened at greater range and the increased capabilities of torpedoes would discourage short-range fighting. At greater ranges, lighter guns had less use, pointing the way to the development of dreadnought battleships. Philip Watts, who replaced White as DNC in 1902, began the design process with studies that demonstrated the traditional 6 in gun would be of little use, and so prepared design variants with an armament of only 12 in and 9.2 in (234 mm) guns (and light anti-torpedo boat guns) and a uniform battery of 10 in weapons. The Admiralty approved a design with four 12 in and twelve 9.2 in guns in August 1903; but, when it became clear that the ships would be too large for some existing dock facilities, Watts had to make revisions that included reducing the secondary battery by two guns.^[53][54]

Lord Nelson and Agamemnon were completed in 1908, having been delayed significantly by the transferral of material intended for them (most significantly their main battery turrets) to Dreadnought so that vessel could be rushed through production. Lord Nelson became the flagship of the Nore Division, to which Agamemnon was also assigned. After the start of the war, both vessels were transferred to the Channel Fleet and covered the crossing of the British Expeditionary Force to France. They then joined the fleet off the Dardanelles in 1915 and spent the rest of the war in the eastern Mediterranean to guard against a sortie by the ex-German battlecruiser Goeben, now under Ottoman control as Yavuz Sultan Selim. Neither Lord Nelson-class ship was able to reach the area in time to intervene in the Battle of Imbros when the Ottoman vessel surprised and sank a pair of monitors. After the war, Lord Nelson was scrapped in 1920, while Agamemnon survived for several years as a radio-controlled target ship, ultimately being broken up in 1927. She was, by that time, the last British pre-dreadnought still in existence.^[55][56]

See also

• List of battleships

Footnotes

Notes