Fast Battleship - The Early Dreadnoughts

The Early Dreadnoughts

Dreadnought was the first major warship powered by turbines. She also included a number of other features indicating an increased emphasis on speed:

• An improved hull form was developed, with increased length-to-beam ratio.
• The thickness of the main belt was reduced to 11 inches, compared to 12 inches for preceding classes.
• The belt terminated at the upper deck, the usual ‘upper belt’ being deleted
• The forecastle was raised, allowing higher sustained speed in heavy seas.

In the decade following the construction of the Dreadnought, the Royal Navy’s lead in capital ship speed was eroded, as rival navies responded with their own turbine-powered “dreadnoughts”. Meanwhile, in Britain, Fisher continued to press for still higher speeds, but the alarming cost of the new battleships and battlecruisers provoked increasing resistance, both within the Admiralty and from the new Liberal Government that took office in 1906. As a result, a number of potentially significant fast battleship designs failed to achieve fruition.

A notable abortive design was the 22,500-tons “X4” design of December 1905. This would have been a true fast battleship by the standards of the time, carrying the same armament and protection as Dreadnought at a speed of 25 knots (46 km/h). In the event, the British lead in dreadnought and battlecruiser construction was deemed to be so great that a further escalation in the size and cost of capital ships could not be justified. The X4 design is often described as a “fusion” of the Dreadnought concept with that of the battlecruiser, and it has been suggested that she “would have rendered the Invincibles obsolete".

Fisher was again rebuffed in 1909 over the first of the 13.5in-gunned “super-dreadnoughts”, the Orion class; of the two alternative designs considered, one of 21 knots (39 km/h) and the other of 23 knots (43 km/h), the Board of Admiralty selected the slower and cheaper design. Fisher had his dissent recorded in the board minutes, complaining that “we should not be outclassed in any type of ship”.