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DREADNOUGHT

DREADNOUGHT, a type of battleship that derived its name from the British warship Dreadnought, launched in 1906. This ship, which marked a new era in naval construction and made obsolete every battleship afloat, bettered its predecessors in displacement, speed, armor, and firepower. It had a displacement of 17,900 tons, a speed of 21.6 knots, a cruising radius of 5,800 sea miles, and was protected by armor eleven inches thick. It was the first battleship to be driven by turbines. Its main battery consisted of ten twelve-inch guns, making it the first all-big gun ship in the world. After its launching and until WORLD WAR I, every battleship built with a main armament entirely of big guns all of one caliber was considered to be in the Dreadnought class.

The Dreadnought inaugurated a race in building battleships of this type between Great Britain, the United States, and other naval powers. In the United States, two ships of this type were designed and authorized in 1905 but were not launched until 1908. They were the South Carolina and Michigan, each with a 16,000-ton displacement

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and armed with eight twelve-inch guns. The United States built fifteen other ships of this type before the out-break of World War I, all of greater tonnage than the Michigan and South Carolina. On 29 August 1916, Congress authorized a building program that included ten Dreadnoughts. During the war, this program was discontinued in favor of building destroyers for overseas duty but was resumed after the armistice. It was finally halted by the Washington Conference of 1922.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hough, Richard A. Dreadnought: A History of the Modern Battle-ship. New York, Macmillan, 1964.

Massie, Robert K. Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War. New York: Random House, 1991; New York: Ballantine, 1992.

Louis H. Bolander/A. R.

See also Warships; Washington Naval Conference; World War I, Navy in.