Launch of HMS Dreadnought

On 10 February 1906 at the naval dockyard in Portsmouth King Edward VII launched HMS Dreadnought, the most modern battleship in the world. The hull took to the water only four months after the keel had been laid. The new battleship carried ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns and no intermediate guns at all, and she was the first battleship with turbine (PL) propulsion. Her name, “Fear nothing”, became the name of a whole generation of warships, and all older battleships came to be called pre-dreadnoughts.

Fisher’s idea

The father of the ship was Admiral John Fisher, First Sea Lord, that is the professional head of the Royal Navy, since 20 October 1904. The idea of a battleship armed only with heavy guns was then current in several navies. In 1903 the Italian designer Vittorio Cuniberti described in the annual “Jane’s Fighting Ships” an ideal ship with twelve 12-inch guns, and the Americans too were working on such a design. A battleship of the day usually carried four 12-inch guns in two turrets, plus many guns of smaller calibres, which made fire control difficult at long ranges.

Fisher pushed through the Admiralty a decision that the next battleship would have only 12-inch guns and a speed of at least 21 knots. In January 1905 he convened, under his own chairmanship, a Committee on Designs, which on 18 January chose turbines over reciprocating engines. Some of the turbines were supplied by the firm of their inventor, Charles Parsons (PL). The committee finished its work in March, and the Admiralty decided not to order any more such ships until the trials of the first had shown whether the design worked.

A year to build

Fisher wanted the ship built in a single year. From as early as May 1905 materials were stockpiled and parts prefabricated, and on 2 October the keel was laid on No. 5 Slip, screened from prying eyes. At first 1,100 and later some 3,000 men worked on her, six days a week for 69 hours, with a half-hour lunch break. After 125 days, on 4 February 1906, the hull was finished.

The launch was to have been a grand ceremony, but the court was in mourning for the father of Queen Alexandra (PL), King Christian IX (PL) of Denmark, who had died 12 days earlier. The Queen did not come, and the King performed a more sober ceremony alone. Under a custom adopted in 1901, British warships were christened with colonial wine, on this occasion Australian. At the first attempt the bottle bounced off the bow, and only at the second did it shatter. The King cried: “I christen you Dreadnought”, the band played the anthem and the crowd cheered.

The ship displaced some 18,000 tons. Her five twin turrets were arranged so that eight heavy guns could fire in a broadside, twice as many as on a typical older battleship. The turbines allowed her to steam for long periods at almost 21 knots, whereas reciprocating engines at full power soon risked breaking down. On 3 October 1906, a year and a day after construction began, Dreadnought put to sea for trials, and in December she entered service.

A new race

Dreadnought wiped out the value of all existing battleships, British ones included. Critics, among them some contemporaries and historians, reproached Fisher for having himself thrown away the Royal Navy’s huge lead in older ships and allowed rivals to start the race almost from scratch. The challenge was taken up by Germany, which since the law of 1898 had been building a fleet against Great Britain. As the historian Dirk Bönker writes, the Navy Bill of 1906 already brought the new ship types into the German programme, at three large ships a year, and in 1908 Germany moved to four. Following Dreadnought, Fisher also introduced battlecruisers, with a battleship’s heavy guns and greater speed at the cost of thinner armour. From then on the strength of navies was counted in dreadnoughts, and in this race Great Britain did not lose its lead before 1914.