Pre-dreadnought Battleship - Pre-dreadnought Fleets and Battles

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 which were essentially cut-down battleships, lighter protected cruisers, 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 submarines 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 British Royal Navy, 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 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 cruisers. Not until the Russo-Japanese War 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 on 8–9 February 1904, the indecisive Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August 1904, and the decisive Japanese victory at the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905.

Gunboat diplomacy 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 naval part of the action was performed by gunboats, destroyers and sloops.