Anatomy of a Pre-Dreadnought Battleship
What defined a pre-dreadnought battleship? It was, first and foremost, a capital ship, mounting the largest guns and toughest armor its navy could afford, and fully capable of maneuvering in the line of battle against any antagonist's battlefleet. The pre-dreadnought era is usually defined as from about 1890 to around 1906. A pre-dreadnought was a steamship, built of steel, with a great ram beak at the bow for puncturing enemy ships below the waterline (although seldom used, this was a nearly universal convention). Driven by piston steam engines, powered by coal-fired boilers, the pre-dreadnought was generally propelled by twin screws. It was armed with many sizes of gun, from the main armament, 50-foot long 12" guns, effective up to five miles, to the secondary batteries used to fend off attack by lightning-swift torpedo boats, to the light antipersonnel weapons used for close-in combat. Electric searchlights mounted on masts and funnels illuminated torpedo attackers at night. And it carried a limited number of big guns: usually three or four, compared to a Dreadnought battleship, which mounted at least ten 12-in guns. Lastly, it carried a full complement of 18-in Whitehead torpedoes -- Glory had 4 submerged tubes to launch her "tin fish" forward, aft, or from either beam -- though there is no record of a battleship sinking an enemy craft with torpedoes. To defend against incoming torpedoes, the battleship was equipped with a "net boom defence" -- a bronze-link net suspended from booms which would surround the ship's underwater hull when anchored. Sadly, this elaborate and expensive defense was easily neutralized by the simple expedient of placing razor-sharp cutters on the noses of incoming German torpedoes.
HMS Glory was a typical British pre-dreadnought, commissioned in 1900, one of the 51 pre-dreadnought battleships in the Royal Navy. She belonged to the Canopus class of light-ish battleships designed principally for colonial service. The Glory is described in detail on our Canopus class page.
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Cuaway of a Pre-Dreadnought
