HMS Commonwealth (1903) - Technical Characteristics

Technical Characteristics

HMS Commonwealth was built at Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan. She was laid down on 17 June 1902, launched on 13 May 1903, and completed in March 1905.

Although Commonwealth and her seven sister ships of the King Edward VII class were a direct descendant of the Majestic class, they were also the first class to make a significant departure from the Majestic design, displacing about 1,000 tons more and mounting for the first time an intermediate battery of four 9.2-inch (234-mm) guns in addition to the standard outfit of 6-inch (152-mm) guns. The 9.2-inch was a quick-firing gun like the 6-inch, and its heavier shell made it a formidable weapon by the standards of the day when the Commonwealth and her sisters were designed; it was adopted out of concerns that British battleships were undergunned for their displacement and were becoming outgunned by foreign battleships that had begun to mount 8-inch (203-mm) intermediate batteries. The four 9.2-inch were mounted in single turrets abreast the foremast and mainmast, and Commonwealth thus could bring two of them to bear on either broadside. Even then, Commonwealth and her sisters were criticised for not having, a uniform secondary battery of 9.2-inch guns, something considered but rejected because of the length of time it would have taken to design the ships with such a radical revision of the secondary armament layout. In the end, it proved impossible to distinguish 12-inch and 9.2-inch shell splashes from one another, making fire control impractical for ships mounting both calibres, although Commonwealth had fire-control platforms on her fore- and mainmasts rather than the fighting tops of earlier classes.

Mounting of the 6-inch guns in casemates was abandoned in Commonwealth and her sister ships, the 6-inch instead being placed in a central battery amidships protected by 7-inch (178-mm) armoured walls. Otherwise, Commonwealth's armour was much as in the London class battleships, although there were various differences in detail from the Londons.

Commonwealth and her sisters were the first British battleships with balanced rudders since the 1870s and were very maneuverable, with a tactical diameter of 340 yards (311 m) at 15 knots (27.75 km/h). However, they were difficult to keep on a straight course, and this characteristic led to them being nicknamed "the Wobbly Eight" during their 1914-1916 service in the Grand Fleet. They had a slightly faster roll than previous British battleship classes, but were good gun platforms, although very wet in bad weather.

Primarily powered by coal, Commonwealth had oil sprayers installed during her construction, as did all of her sisters except HMS New Zealand, the first time this had been done in British battleships. These allowed steam pressure to be rapidly increased, improving Commonwealth's acceleration. The eight ships between them were given four different boiler installations for comparative purposes; Commonwealth's outfit of 16 Babcock and Wilcox boilers allowed her to exceed her designed speed on trials, during which she exceeded 19.5 knots (36 km/h).

Commonwealth was a powerful ship when she was designed, and completely fulfilled the goals set for her at that time. However, she was unlucky in that the years of her design and construction were ones of revolutionary advancement in naval guns, fire control, armor, and propulsion. She joined the fleet in mid-1905, but quickly was made obsolete by the commissioning of the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought at the end of 1906 and the large numbers of the new dreadnought battleships that commissioned in succeeding years. By 1914, Commonwealth and her King Edward VII-class sisters were, like all predreadnoughts, so outclassed that they spent much of their 1914-1916 Grand Fleet service steaming at the heads of divisions of the far more valuable dreadnoughts, protecting the dreadnoughts from naval mines by being the first battleships to either sight or strike them.

Commonwealth, however, was reconstructed in 1918 with all the trappings (such as updated fire control systems) of modern dreadnought battleships, so as to provide an adequate gunnery training platform. She served in this capacity until 1921, leaving service as the last seagoing British predreadnought still armed with her guns and the second-to-last British predreadnought in active service (outlasted only by HMS Agamemnon, which served as a disarmed seagoing radio-controlled target ship until 1926).