The building of Dreadnought coincided with increasing tension between the United Kingdom and Germany. Germany had begun to build a large battlefleet in the 1890s, as part of a deliberate policy to challenge British naval supremacy. With the conclusion of the Entente Cordiale between the...
Dreadnought building
Dreadnoughts were developed as a move in an international battleship arms-race which had begun in the 1890s. The British Royal Navy had a big lead in the number of pre-dreadnought battleships, but a lead of only one dreadnought.[88] This has led to criticism that the...
Fuel
The first generation of dreadnoughts used coal to fire the boilers which fed steam to the turbines. Coal had been in use since the very first steam warships, but had many disadvantages. It was labor-intensive to pack coal into the ship’s bunkers and then feed...
Propulsion
Dreadnoughts were propelled by two to four screw propellers.[73] Dreadnought herself, and all British dreadnoughts, had screw shafts driven by steam turbines. However, the first generation of dreadnoughts built in other nations used the slower triple-expansion steam engine which had been standard in pre-dreadnoughts.[74] Turbines...
Underwater protection and subdivision
The final element of the protection scheme of the first dreadnoughts was the subdivision of the ship below the waterline into several watertight compartments. If the hull was holed—by shellfire, mine, torpedo, or collision—then, in theory, only one area would flood and the ship could...
Central citadel
The bulk of a dreadnought’s armor was concentrated around the “armored citadel”. This was a box, with four armored walls and an armored roof, around the most important parts of the ship. The sides of the citadel were the “armored belt” of the ship, which...
Armor
Much of the displacement of a dreadnought was taken up by the steel plating of its armor. Designers spent much time and effort to provide the best possible protection for their ships against the various weapons they would be faced with. However, only so much...
Secondary armament
The first dreadnoughts tended to have a very light secondary armament intended to protect them from torpedo boats. Dreadnought herself carried 12-pounder guns; each of her twenty-two 12-pounders could fire at least 15 rounds a minute at any torpedo boat making an attack.[57] The South...
Main armament power and caliber
Rather than try to fit more guns onto a ship, it was possible to increase the power of each gun. This could be done by increasing either the caliber of the weapon and hence the weight of shell, or by lengthening the barrel to increase...
Position of main armament
The effectiveness of the guns depended in part on the layout of the turrets. Dreadnought, and the British ships which immediately followed her, carried five turrets: one forward and two aft on the centerline of the ship, and two in the ‘wings’ next to the...