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Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going
battleship A battleship is a large armour, armored warship with a main artillery battery, battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1 ...
s built between the mid- to late- 1880s and 1905, before the launch of in 1906. The pre-dreadnought ships replaced the
ironclad An ironclad is a steam-propelled warship protected by iron or steel armor plates, constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. Th ...
battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, protected by case-hardened steel armour, and powered by
coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...
-fired
triple-expansion steam engine A compound steam engine unit is a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. A typical arrangement for a compound engine is that the steam is first expanded in a high-pressure ''(HP)'' cylinder, then having given up ...
s, pre-dreadnought battleships carried a main battery of very heavy guns in fully enclosed rotating
turrets Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * M ...
supported by one or more
secondary batteries A rechargeable battery, storage battery, or secondary cell (formally a type of energy accumulator), is a type of electrical battery which can be charged, discharged into a load, and recharged many times, as opposed to a disposable or prima ...
of lighter weapons. In contrast to the multifarious development of ironclad warships in preceding decades, the 1890s saw navies worldwide start to build battleships to a common design as dozens of ships essentially followed the design of the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...
's . The similarity in appearance of battleships in the 1890s was underlined by the increasing number of ships being built. New naval powers such as
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
,
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
, the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, and to a lesser extent
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
and
Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
, began to establish themselves with fleets of pre-dreadnoughts. Meanwhile, the battleship fleets of the United Kingdom,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, and
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
expanded to meet these new threats. The last decisive clash of pre-dreadnought fleets was between the
Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...
and the
Imperial Russian Navy The Imperial Russian Navy () operated as the navy of the Russian Tsardom and later the Russian Empire from 1696 to 1917. Formally established in 1696, it lasted until dissolved in the wake of the February Revolution of 1917. It developed from ...
at the
Battle of Tsushima The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese:対馬沖海戦, Tsushimaoki''-Kaisen'', russian: Цусимское сражение, ''Tsusimskoye srazheniye''), also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of Sea of Japan (Japanese: 日 ...
on 27 May 1905. These battleships were abruptly made obsolete by the arrival of in 1906. ''Dreadnought'' followed the trend in battleship design to heavier, longer-ranged guns by adopting an "all-big-gun" armament scheme of ten 12-inch guns. Her innovative
steam turbine A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam tu ...
engines also made her faster.Massie, ''Dreadnought'', pp. 474–475. The existing pre-dreadnoughts were decisively outclassed, and new and more powerful battleships were from then on known as
dreadnought The dreadnought (alternatively spelled dreadnaught) was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's , had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her ...
s. At the same time, the ships that had been
laid down Laying the keel or laying down is the formal recognition of the start of a ship's construction. It is often marked with a ceremony attended by dignitaries from the shipbuilding company and the ultimate owners of the ship. Keel laying is one o ...
before were designated pre-dreadnoughts.


Evolution

The pre-dreadnought developed from the
ironclad battleship An ironclad is a steam-propelled warship protected by iron or steel armor plates, constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. T ...
. The first ironclads—the French ''Gloire'' and —looked much like sailing
frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed an ...
s, with three tall masts and
broadside Broadside or broadsides may refer to: Naval * Broadside (naval), terminology for the side of a ship, the battery of cannon on one side of a warship, or their near simultaneous fire on naval warfare Printing and literature * Broadside (comic ...
batteries, when they were commissioned in the early 1860s. HMVS ''Cerberus'', the first breastwork monitor, was launched in 1868, followed in 1871 by , a turreted ironclad which more resembled a pre-dreadnought than the previous, and its contemporary, turretless ironclads. Both ships dispensed with masts and carried four heavy guns in two turrets fore and aft. ''Devastation'' was the first ocean-worthy breastwork monitor, built to attack enemy coasts and harbours; because of her very low freeboard, she could not fight on the high seas as her decks would be swept by water and spray, interfering with the working of her guns. Navies worldwide continued to build masted, turretless battleships which had sufficient freeboard and were seaworthy enough to fight on the high seas. The distinction between coast-assault battleship and cruising battleship became blurred with the Admiral-class ironclads, ordered in 1880. These ships reflected developments in ironclad design, being protected by iron-and-steel compound armour rather than
wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" ...
. Equipped with
breech-loading A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition ( cartridge or shell) via the rear (breech) end of its barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, which loads ammunition via the front ( muzzle). Modern firearms are generally breec ...
guns of between 12-inch and 16 ¼-inch (305 mm and 413 mm) calibre, the Admirals continued the trend of ironclad warships mounting gigantic weapons. The guns were mounted in open
barbette Barbettes are several types of gun emplacement in terrestrial fortifications or on naval ships. In recent naval usage, a barbette is a protective circular armour support for a heavy gun turret. This evolved from earlier forms of gun protectio ...
s to save weight. Some historians see these ships as a vital step towards pre-dreadnoughts; others view them as a confused and unsuccessful design. The subsequent of 1889 retained barbettes but were uniformly armed with guns; they were also significantly larger (at 14,000 tons displacement) and faster (because of triple-expansion steam engines) than the Admirals. Just as importantly, the ''Royal Sovereign''s had a higher freeboard, making them unequivocally capable of the high-seas battleship role. The pre-dreadnought design reached maturity in 1895 with the . These ships were built and armoured entirely of steel, and their guns were now mounted in fully-enclosed rotating turrets. They also adopted main guns, which, because of advances in gun construction and the use of
cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom since 1889 to replace black powder as a military propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burn ...
propellant, were lighter and more powerful than the previous guns of larger calibre. The ''Majestic''s provided the model for battleship building in the Royal Navy and many other navies for years to come.


Armament


Main battery

Pre-dreadnoughts carried guns of several different calibres, for different roles in ship-to-ship combat. The main armament was a main battery of four heavy guns, mounted in two centre-line turrets fore and aft. Very few pre-dreadnoughts deviated from this arrangement. These guns were slow-firing, and initially of limited accuracy; but they were the only guns heavy enough to penetrate the thick armour which protected the engines, magazines, and main guns of enemy battleships.Sumrall, p. 14. The most common calibre for the main armament was , although some ships used smaller guns because they could attain higher rates of fire; British battleships from the ''Majestic'' class onwards carried this calibre, as did French ships from the ''
Charlemagne Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first E ...
'' class, laid down in 1894. Japan, importing most of its guns from Britain, used 12-inch guns. The United States used both and guns for most of the 1890s until the , laid down in 1899 (and not to be confused with the earlier of
Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (clock ...
notoriety), after which the 12-inch gun was universal. The Russians used both 12 and as their main armament; the , , ''Tsesarevich'', and had main batteries while the mounted guns. The first German pre-dreadnought class used an gun but decreased to a gun for the two following classes and returned to 11-inch guns with the . While the calibre of the main battery remained quite constant, the performance of the guns improved as longer barrels were introduced. The introduction of slow-burning
nitrocellulose Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and ...
and
cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom since 1889 to replace black powder as a military propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burn ...
propellant allowed the employment of a longer barrel, and therefore higher
muzzle velocity Muzzle velocity is the speed of a projectile ( bullet, pellet, slug, ball/ shots or shell) with respect to the muzzle at the moment it leaves the end of a gun's barrel (i.e. the muzzle). Firearm muzzle velocities range from approximately ...
—giving greater range and penetrating power for the same calibre of shell. Between the ''Majestic'' class and ''Dreadnought'', the length of the British 12-inch gun increased from 35 calibres to 45 and muzzle velocity increased from per second to per second.


Secondary battery

Pre-dreadnoughts also carried a secondary battery. This consisted of smaller guns, typically , though any calibre from 4 to 9.4 inches (100 to 240 mm) could be used. Virtually all secondary guns were " quick firing", employing a number of innovations to increase the rate of fire. The propellant was provided in a brass cartridge, and both the breech mechanism and the mounting were suitable for rapid aiming and reloading. The role of the secondary battery was to damage the less armoured parts of an enemy battleship; while unable to penetrate the main armour belt, it might score hits on lightly armoured areas like the bridge, or start fires. Equally important, the secondary armament was to be used against enemy
cruiser A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several roles. The term "cruiser", which has been in use for several ...
s,
destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed ...
s, and even
torpedo boat A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of ...
s. A medium-calibre gun could expect to penetrate the light armour of smaller ships, while the rate of fire of the secondary battery was important in scoring a hit against a small, manoeuvrable target. Secondary guns were mounted in a variety of ways; sometimes carried in turrets, they were just as often positioned in fixed armoured casemates in the side of the hull, or in unarmoured positions on upper decks.


Intermediate battery

Some of the pre-dreadnoughts carried an "intermediate" battery, typically of 8-inch (203 mm) to 10-inch calibre. The intermediate battery was a method of packing more heavy firepower into the same battleship, principally of use against battleships or at long ranges. The United States Navy pioneered the intermediate battery concept in the , , and classes, but not in the battleships laid down between 1897 and 1901.Roberts, p. 122. Shortly after the USN re-adopted the intermediate battery, the British, Italian, Russian, French, and Japanese navies laid down intermediate-battery ships. This later generation of intermediate-battery ships almost without exception finished building after ''Dreadnought'', and hence were obsolete before completion.


Tertiary battery

The pre-dreadnought's armament was completed by a tertiary battery of light, rapid-fire guns. These could be of any calibre from 3-inch (76 mm) down to
machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles ...
s. Their role was to give short-range protection against torpedo boats, or to rake the deck and superstructure of a battleship.


Torpedoes

In addition to their gun armament, many pre-dreadnought battleships were armed with torpedoes, fired from fixed tubes located either above or below the waterline. By the pre-dreadnought era the torpedo was typically in diameter and had an effective range of several thousand metres. However, it was virtually unknown for a battleship to score a hit with a torpedo.


Range of combat

During the ironclad age, the range of engagements increased; in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 battles were fought at around 1 mile (1.5 km), while in the
Battle of the Yellow Sea The Battle of the Yellow Sea ( ja, 黄海海戦, Kōkai kaisen; russian: Бой в Жёлтом море) was a major naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War, fought on 10 August 1904. In the Russian Navy, it was referred to as the Battle of 10 A ...
in 1904, the Russian and Japanese fleets fought at ranges of 3.5 miles (5.5 km). The increase in engagement range was due in part to the longer range of torpedoes, and in part to improved gunnery and fire control. In consequence, shipbuilders tended towards heavier secondary armament, of the same calibre that the "intermediate" battery had been; the Royal Navy's last pre-dreadnought class, the ''Lord Nelson'' class, carried ten 9.2-inch guns as secondary armament. Ships with a uniform, heavy secondary battery are often referred to as "semi-dreadnoughts".


Protection

Pre-dreadnought battleships carried a considerable weight of steel armour. Experience showed that rather than giving the ship uniform armour protection, it was best to concentrate armour over critical areas. The central section of the hull, which housed the boilers and engines, was protected by the main belt, which ran from just below the waterline to some distance above it. This "central citadel" was intended to protect the engines from even the most powerful shells. The main armament and the magazines were protected by projections of thick armour from the main belt. The beginning of the pre-dreadnought era was marked by a move from mounting the main armament in open barbettes to an all-enclosed, turret mounting.Roberts, p. 117. The main belt armour would normally taper to a lesser thickness along the side of the hull towards bow and stern; it might also taper up from the central citadel towards the superstructure. The deck was typically lightly armoured with 2 to 4 inches of steel. This lighter armour was to prevent high-explosive shells from wrecking the superstructure of the ship. The battleships of the late 1880s, for instance the , were armoured with iron and steel compound armour. This was soon replaced with more effective case-hardened steel armour made using the Harvey process developed in the United States. First tested in 1891, Harvey armour was commonplace in ships laid down from 1893 to 1895. However, its reign was brief; in 1895, the German ''Kaiser Friedrich III'' pioneered the superior
Krupp armour Krupp armour was a type of steel naval armour used in the construction of capital ships starting shortly before the end of the nineteenth century. It was developed by Germany's Krupp Arms Works in 1893 and quickly replaced Harvey armour as the ...
. Europe adopted Krupp plate within five years, and only the United States persisted in using Harvey steel into the 20th century. The improving quality of armour plate meant that new ships could have better protection from a thinner and lighter armour belt; 12 inches (305 mm) of compound armour provided the same protection as just 7.5 inches (190 mm) of Harvey or 5.75 inches (133 mm) of Krupp.


Propulsion

Almost all pre-dreadnoughts were powered by reciprocating
steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be ...
s. Most were capable of top speeds between 16 and . The ironclads of the 1880s used
compound engine A compound engine is an engine that has more than one stage for recovering energy from the same working fluid, with the exhaust from the first stage passing through the second stage, and in some cases then on to another subsequent stage or even st ...
s, and by the end of the 1880s the even-more efficient triple expansion compound engine was in use. Some fleets, though not the British, adopted the quadruple-expansion steam engine.Roberts, p. 114. The main improvement in engine performance during the pre-dreadnought period came from the adoption of increasingly higher pressure steam from the boiler. Scotch marine boilers were superseded by more compact
water-tube boiler A high pressure watertube boiler (also spelled water-tube and water tube) is a type of boiler in which water circulates in tubes heated externally by the fire. Fuel is burned inside the furnace, creating hot gas which boils water in the steam-gen ...
s, allowing higher-pressure steam to be produced with less fuel consumption. Water-tube boilers were also safer, with less risk of explosion, and more flexible than fire-tube types. The Belleville-type water-tube boiler had been introduced in the French fleet as early as 1879, but it took until 1894 for the Royal Navy to adopt it for armoured cruisers and pre-dreadnoughts; other water-tube boilers followed in navies worldwide. The engines drove either two or three
screw propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upo ...
s. France and Germany preferred the three-screw approach, which allowed the engines to be shorter and hence more easily protected; they were also more maneuverable and had better resistance to accidental damage. Triple screws were, however, generally larger and heavier than the twin-screw arrangements preferred by most other navies. The French also built the only class of
turbine A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...
powered pre-dreadnought battleships, the of 1907. Coal was the almost exclusive fuel for the pre-dreadnought period, though navies made the first experiments with oil propulsion in the late 1890s. An extra knot or two of speed could be gained by applying a 'forced draught' to the furnaces, where air was pumped into the furnaces, but this risked damage to the boilers.


Pre-dreadnought fleets and battles

The pre-dreadnought battleship in its heyday was the core of a very diverse navy. Many older ironclads were still in service. Battleships served alongside cruisers of many descriptions: modern
armoured cruisers The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a battleship and fast eno ...
which were essentially cut-down battleships, lighter
protected cruiser Protected cruisers, a type of naval cruiser of the late-19th century, gained their description because an armoured deck offered protection for vital machine-spaces from fragments caused by shells exploding above them. Protected cruisers re ...
s, and even older unarmoured cruisers, sloops and frigates whether built out of steel, iron or wood. The battleships were threatened by torpedo boats; it was during the pre-dreadnought era that the first destroyers were constructed to deal with the torpedo-boat threat, though at the same time the first effective
submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
s were being constructed. The pre-dreadnought age saw the beginning of the end of the 19th century naval balance of power in which France and Russia vied for competition against the massive
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...
, and saw the start of the rise of the 'new naval powers' of Germany, Japan and the USA. The new ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy and to a lesser extent the U.S. Navy supported those powers' colonial expansion. While pre-dreadnoughts were adopted worldwide, there were no clashes between pre-dreadnought battleships until the very end of their period of dominance. The
First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the p ...
in 1894–95 influenced pre-dreadnought development, but this had been a clash between Chinese battleships and a Japanese fleet consisting of mostly cruisers. The Spanish–American War of 1898 was also a mismatch, with the American pre-dreadnought fleet engaging Spanish shore batteries at San Juan and then a Spanish squadron of armoured cruisers and destroyers at the
Battle of Santiago de Cuba The Battle of Santiago de Cuba was a decisive naval engagement that occurred on July 3, 1898 between an American fleet, led by William T. Sampson and Winfield Scott Schley, against a Spanish fleet led by Pascual Cervera y Topete, which occurre ...
. Not until the
Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
of 1904–05 did pre-dreadnoughts engage on an equal footing. This happened in three battles: the Russian tactical victory during the
Battle of Port Arthur The of 8–9 February 1904 marked the commencement of the Russo-Japanese War. It began with a surprise night attack by a squadron of Japanese destroyers on the neutral Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria, and continued with an ...
on 8–9 February 1904, the indecisive
Battle of the Yellow Sea The Battle of the Yellow Sea ( ja, 黄海海戦, Kōkai kaisen; russian: Бой в Жёлтом море) was a major naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War, fought on 10 August 1904. In the Russian Navy, it was referred to as the Battle of 10 A ...
on 10 August 1904, and the decisive Japanese victory at the
Battle of Tsushima The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese:対馬沖海戦, Tsushimaoki''-Kaisen'', russian: Цусимское сражение, ''Tsusimskoye srazheniye''), also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of Sea of Japan (Japanese: 日 ...
on 27 May 1905. These battles upended prevailing theories of how naval battles would be fought, as the fleets began firing at one another at much greater distances than before; naval architects realized that
plunging fire Plunging fire is a form of indirect fire, where gunfire is fired at a trajectory to make it fall on its target from above. It is normal at the high trajectories used to attain long range, and can be used deliberately to attack a target not susce ...
(explosive shells falling on their targets largely from above, instead of from a trajectory close to horizontal) was a much greater threat than had been thought.
Gunboat diplomacy In international politics, the term gunboat diplomacy refers to the pursuit of foreign policy objectives with the aid of conspicuous displays of naval power, implying or constituting a direct threat of warfare should terms not be agreeable to ...
was typically conducted by cruisers or smaller warships. A British squadron of three protected cruisers and two gunboats brought about the capitulation of Zanzibar in 1896; and while battleships participated in the combined fleet Western powers deployed during the
Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an Xenophobia, anti-foreign, anti-colonialism, anti-colonial, and Persecution of Christians#China, anti-Christian uprising in China ...
, the naval part of the action was performed by gunboats, destroyers and sloops.


Europe

European navies remained dominant in the pre-dreadnought era. The
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...
remained the world's largest fleet, though both Britain's traditional naval rivals and the new European powers increasingly asserted themselves against its supremacy. In 1889, Britain formally adopted a 'two power standard' committing it to building enough battleships to exceed the two largest other navies combined; at the time, this meant France and Russia, who became formally allied in the early 1890s. The and were followed by a regular programme of construction at a much quicker pace than in previous years. The , , and classes appeared in rapid succession from 1897 to 1905. Counting two ships ordered by Chile but taken over by the British, the Royal Navy had 39 pre-dreadnought battleships ready or being built by 1904, starting the count from the ''Majestic''s. Over two dozen older battleships remained in service. The last British pre-dreadnoughts, the , appeared after ''Dreadnought'' herself. France, Britain's traditional naval rival, had paused its battleship building during the 1880s because of the influence of the Jeune École doctrine, which favoured torpedo boats to battleships. After the Jeune École's influence faded, the first French battleship laid down was ''Brennus'', in 1889. ''Brennus'' and the ships which followed her were individual, as opposed to the large classes of British ships; they also carried an idiosyncratic arrangement of heavy guns, with ''Brennus'' carrying three guns and the ships which followed carrying two 12-inch and two 10.8-inch in single turrets. The , laid down 1894–1896, were the first to adopt the standard four gun heavy armament. The Jeune École retained a strong influence on French naval strategy, and by the end of the 19th century France had abandoned competition with Britain in battleship numbers. The French suffered the most from the dreadnought revolution, with four ships of the still building when ''Dreadnought'' launched, and a further six of the begun afterwards. Germany's first pre-dreadnoughts, the , were laid down in 1890. By 1905, a further 19 battleships were built or under construction, thanks to the sharp increase in naval expenditure justified by the 1898 and 1900 Navy Laws. This increase was due to the determination of the navy chief
Alfred von Tirpitz Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz (19 March 1849 – 6 March 1930) was a German grand admiral, Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office, the powerful administrative branch of the German Imperial Navy from 1897 until 1916. Prussi ...
and the growing sense of national rivalry with the UK. Besides the ''Brandenburg'' class, German pre-dreadnoughts include the ships of the , , and classes—culminating in the , which served in both world wars. On the whole, the German ships were less powerful than their British equivalents but equally robust. Russia equally entered into a programme of naval expansion in the 1890s; one of Russia's main objectives was to maintain its interests against Japanese expansion in the Far East. The ''Petropavlovsk'' class begun in 1892 took after the British s; later ships showed more French influence on their designs, such as the . The weakness of Russian shipbuilding meant that many ships were built overseas for Russia; the best ship, the ''Retvizan'', being largely constructed in America. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was a disaster for the Russian pre-dreadnoughts; of the 15 battleships completed since ''Petropavlovsk'', eleven were sunk or captured during the war. One of these, the famous ''Potemkin'', mutinied and was briefly taken over by
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
at the end of the mutiny. However, she was soon recovered and recommissioned as ''Panteleimon''. After the war, Russia completed four more pre-dreadnoughts after 1905. Between 1893 and 1904, Italy laid down eight battleships; the later two classes of ship were remarkably fast, though the ''Regina Margherita'' class was poorly protected and the ''Regina Elena'' class lightly armed. In some ways, these ships presaged the concept of the
battlecruiser The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attr ...
. The Austro-Hungarian Empire also saw a naval renaissance during the 1890s, though of the nine pre-dreadnought battleships ordered only the three of the ''Habsburg'' class arrived before ''Dreadnought'' herself made them obsolete.


America and the Pacific

The United States started building its first battleships in 1891. These ships were short-range coast-defence battleships that were similar to the British except for an innovative intermediate battery of 8-inch guns. The US Navy continued to build ships that were relatively short-range and poor in heavy seas, until the laid down in 1901–02. Nevertheless, it was these earlier ships that ensured American naval dominance against the antiquated Spanish fleet—which included no pre-dreadnoughts—in the
Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (clock ...
, most notably at the
Battle of Santiago de Cuba The Battle of Santiago de Cuba was a decisive naval engagement that occurred on July 3, 1898 between an American fleet, led by William T. Sampson and Winfield Scott Schley, against a Spanish fleet led by Pascual Cervera y Topete, which occurre ...
. The final two classes of American pre-dreadnoughts (the s and s) were completed after the completion of the ''Dreadnought'' and after the start of design work on the USN's own initial class of dreadnoughts. The US
Great White Fleet The Great White Fleet was the popular nickname for the group of United States Navy battleships which completed a journey around the globe from December 16, 1907 to February 22, 1909 by order of President Theodore Roosevelt. Its mission was ...
of 16 pre-dreadnought battleships circumnavigated the world from 16 December 1907, to 22 February 1909. Japan was involved in two of the three major naval wars of the pre-dreadnought era. The first Japanese pre-dreadnought battleships, the ''Fuji'' class, were still being built at the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, which saw Japanese armoured cruisers and protected cruisers defeat the Chinese
Beiyang Fleet The Beiyang Fleet (Pei-yang Fleet; , alternatively Northern Seas Fleet) was one of the four modernized Chinese navies in the late Qing dynasty. Among the four, the Beiyang Fleet was particularly sponsored by Li Hongzhang, one of the most tru ...
, composed of a mixture of old ironclad battleships and cruisers, at the Battle of the Yalu River. Following their victory, and facing Russian pressure in the region, the Japanese placed orders for four more pre-dreadnoughts; along with the two ''Fuji''s these battleships formed the core of the fleet which twice engaged the numerically superior Russian fleets at the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Battle of Tsushima. After capturing eight Russian battleships of various ages, Japan built several more classes of pre-dreadnoughts after the Russo-Japanese War.


Obsolescence

In 1906, the commissioning of brought about the obsolescence of all existing battleships. ''Dreadnought'', by scrapping the secondary battery, was able to carry ten guns rather than four. She could fire eight heavy guns broadside, as opposed to four from a pre-dreadnought; and six guns ahead, as opposed to two. The move to an 'all-big-gun' design was a logical conclusion of the increasingly long engagement ranges and heavier secondary batteries of the last pre-dreadnoughts; Japan and the United States had designed ships with a similar armament before ''Dreadnought'', but were unable to complete them before the British ship. It was felt that because of the longer distances at which battles could be fought, only the largest guns were effective in battle, and by mounting more 12-inch guns ''Dreadnought'' was two to three times more effective in combat than an existing battleship. The armament of the new breed of ships was not their only crucial advantage. ''Dreadnought'' used steam turbines for propulsion, giving her a top speed of 21 knots, against the 18 knots typical of the pre-dreadnought battleships. Able both to outgun and outmaneuver their opponents, the dreadnought battleships decisively outclassed earlier battleship designs. Nevertheless, pre-dreadnoughts continued in active service and saw significant combat use even when obsolete. Dreadnoughts and battlecruisers were believed vital for the decisive naval battles which at the time all nations expected, hence they were jealously guarded against the risk of damage by mines or submarine attack, and kept close to home as much as possible. The obsolescence and consequent expendability of the pre-dreadnoughts meant that they could be deployed into more dangerous situations and more far-flung areas.


World War I

During World War I, a large number of pre-dreadnoughts remained in service. The advances in machinery and armament meant that a pre-dreadnought was not necessarily the equal of even a modern armoured cruiser, and was totally outclassed by a modern dreadnought battleship or battlecruiser. Nevertheless, the pre-dreadnought played a major role in the war. This was first illustrated in the skirmishes between British and German navies around South America in 1914. While two German cruisers menaced British shipping, the Admiralty insisted that no battlecruisers could be spared from the main fleet and sent to the other side of the world to deal with them. Instead the British dispatched a pre-dreadnought of 1896 vintage, . Intended to stiffen the British cruisers in the area, in fact her slow speed meant that she was left behind at the disastrous Battle of Coronel. ''Canopus'' redeemed herself at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, but only when grounded to act as a harbour-defence vessel; she fired at extreme range (13,500 yards) on the German cruiser SMS ''Gneisenau'', and while the only hit was from an inert practice shell which had been left loaded from the previous night (the 'live' shells of the salvo broke up on contact with water; one inert shell ricocheted into one of ''Gneisenau''s funnels), this certainly deterred ''Gneisenau''. The subsequent battle was decided by the two s which had been dispatched after Coronel. This appears to have been the only meaningful engagement of an enemy ship by a British pre-dreadnought. In the Black Sea five Russian pre-dreadnoughts saw brief action against the Ottoman battlecruiser ''Yavuz'' during the Battle of Cape Sarych in November 1914. The principle that disposable pre-dreadnoughts could be used where no modern ship could be risked was affirmed by British, French and German navies in subsidiary theatres of war. The German navy used its pre-dreadnoughts frequently in the Baltic campaign. However, the largest number of pre-dreadnoughts was engaged at the
Gallipoli The Gallipoli peninsula (; tr, Gelibolu Yarımadası; grc, Χερσόνησος της Καλλίπολης, ) is located in the southern part of East Thrace, the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles s ...
campaign. Twelve British and French pre-dreadnoughts formed the bulk of the force which attempted to ' force the Dardanelles' in March 1915. The role of the pre-dreadnoughts was to support the brand-new dreadnought engaging the Turkish shore defences. Three of the pre-dreadnoughts were sunk by mines, and several more badly damaged. However, it was not the damage to the pre-dreadnoughts which led to the operation being called off. The two battlecruisers were also damaged; since ''Queen Elizabeth'' could not be risked in the minefield, and the pre-dreadnoughts would be unable to deal with the Turkish battlecruiser lurking on the other side of the straits, the operation had failed. Pre-dreadnoughts were also used to support the Gallipoli landings, with the loss of three more: , and . A squadron of German pre-dreadnoughts was present at the
Battle of Jutland The Battle of Jutland (german: Skagerrakschlacht, the Battle of the Skagerrak) was a naval battle fought between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, under Vice ...
in 1916; German sailors called them the "five-minute ships", which was the amount of time they were expected to survive in a pitched battle. In spite of their limitations, the pre-dreadnought squadron played a useful role. As the German fleet disengaged from the battle, the pre-dreadnoughts risked themselves by turning on the British battlefleet as dark set. Nevertheless, only one of the pre-dreadnoughts was sunk: SMS ''Pommern'' went down in the confused night action as the battlefleets disengaged. Following the November 1918 Armistice, the U.S. Navy converted fifteen older battleships, eight armoured cruisers and two larger protected cruisers for temporary service as transports. These ships made one to six trans-Atlantic round-trips each, bringing home a total of more than 145,000 passengers.


World War II

After World War I, most battleships, dreadnought and pre-dreadnought alike, were disarmed under the terms of the
Washington Naval Treaty The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Nav ...
. Largely this meant the ships being broken up for scrap; others were destroyed in target practice or relegated to training and supply duties. One, ''Mikasa'', was given a special exemption to the Washington Treaty and was maintained as a
museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...
and memorial ship. Germany, which lost most of its fleet under the terms of the
Versailles treaty The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 19 ...
, was allowed to keep eight pre-dreadnoughts (of which only six could be in active service at any one time) which were counted as armoured coast-defence ships;Lenton 1975, p.13. two of these were still in use at the beginning of World War II. One of these, , shelled the Polish Westerplatte peninsula, opening the German invasion of Poland and firing the first shots of the Second World War. ''Schleswig-Holstein'' served for most of the war as a training ship; she was sunk while under refit in December 1944, and broken up ''in situ'' in January 1945. The other, , was mined and then scuttled in March 1945.Chesneau, p. 200. A number of the inactive or disarmed pre-dreadnoughts were nevertheless sunk in action during World War II, such as the Greek pre-dreadnoughts ''Kilkis'' and ''Lemnos'', bought from the U.S. Navy in 1914. While neither of the ships was in active service, they were both sunk by German divebombers after the German invasion in 1941. In the Pacific, the U.S. Navy submarine sank the disarmed Japanese pre-dreadnought ''Asahi'' in May 1942. A veteran of Tsushima, she was serving as a repair ship.


Post World War II

No pre-dreadnoughts served post–World War II as armed ships; the last serving pre-dreadnought was the former , which was used as a target ship by the Soviet Union into the early 1960s as the ''Tsel''. The hull of the former served as a crane ship from 1920 until its scrapping in 1955. The
hulk The Hulk is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in the debut issue of ''The Incredible Hulk (comic book), The Incredible Hulk' ...
of the ex- was used as an ammunition barge at Guam until 1948, after which she was scrapped in 1956.


Lone survivor

The only pre-dreadnought preserved today is the
Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...
's flagship at the
Battle of Tsushima The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese:対馬沖海戦, Tsushimaoki''-Kaisen'', russian: Цусимское сражение, ''Tsusimskoye srazheniye''), also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of Sea of Japan (Japanese: 日 ...
, , which is now located in Yokosuka, where she has been a
museum ship A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small numb ...
since 1925.Chesneau, p. 224.Corkill, Ednan
"How The Japan Times Saved a Foundering Battleship, Twice"
''
The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched b ...
'', 18 December 2011. Retrieved 2 August 2012.


See also

*


References


Sources

* Beeler, John, ''Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design 1870–1881''. Caxton, London, 2003. * Burt, R. A., ''British Battleships 1889–1904'' Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988. . * Chesneau, Roger and Kolesnik, Eugene M. (eds.) ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905''. Greenwich, UK: Conway Maritime Press. 1979. . * Chesneau, Roger (ed). ''Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946''. London: Conway, 1980. . * Forczyk, Robert. ''Russian Battleship vs Japanese Battleship; Yellow Sea 1904–05''. Osprey, 2009. * Gardiner, Robert and Lambert, Andrew ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire: The Steam Warship, 1815–1905''. Conways, London, 2001, ** Roberts, J. "The Pre-Dreadnought Age" in Gardiner ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire''. ** Campbell, J. "Naval Armaments and Armour" in Gardiner ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire''. ** Griffiths, D. "Warship Machinery" in Gardiner, ''Steam, Steel and Shellfire''. * Gardiner, Robert. ''The Eclipse of the Big Gun: The Warship 1906–45''. Conways, London, 1992. ** Sumrall, R. ''The Battleship and Battlecruiser'' in Gardiner ''Eclipse of the Big Gun''. * Hill, Robert ''War at Sea in the Ironclad Age''. Cassell, London, 2000. * Jentschura Jung & Mickel, ''Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869–1946'', * Keegan, J. ''The First World War''. Pimlico, London, 1999. . * Kennedy, Paul M. ''The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery''. Macmillan, London, 1983. . * Lenton, H.T. ''German Warships of the Second World War''. London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1975. . * Massie, Robert K. '' Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War''. Pimlico, London, 2004. * Massie, Robert K. '' Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea''. Pimlico, London, 2005. * Sondhaus, Lawrence. ''Naval Warfare 1815–1914''. Routledge, London, 2001.


External links


British and German Pre-Dreadnoughts





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