British Response
The ship was widely regarded as the most powerful of her day, inspiring the Royal Navy, the largest in the world at the time, to respond with HMS Inflexible, intended as a direct counter to the Caio Duilio and her sister ship Enrico Dandolo. The Royal Navy perceived the growing Regia Marina as a potential threat both to its territories and bases in the Mediterranean and to its trade route through the Suez Canal to India. Inflexible was conceptually very similar to the Italian ships, and attracted the same controversy. However, Inflexible was originally designed with 60-ton guns, to outgun the Italian ships' original 35-ton guns.
However it was not possible to increase the size of the British ship's guns to keep up with those of the Italian ships; and Inflexible was completed with 81-ton 16 inch (406 mm) guns. As a further measure, however, the British government installed two of Armstrong's 100-ton 450 mm guns in Gibraltar and another two in Malta. One gun of each of these pairs has survived to the present. In Gibraltar the British mounted one gun in Victoria Battery (1879) and the other in Napier of Magdala Battery (1883); the gun in Malta is at Fort Rinella.
Read more about this topic: Italian Ironclad Caio Duilio
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