HMS Dreadnought

The Ship


Sold for Scrap 1923


HMS Dreadnought, named after a ship of the line at the Battle of Trafalgar, gave her name to a revolution in naval warfare. Built in Portsmouth dockyard in just over a year, she was the best-armed and fastest battleship in the world when completed in 1906. At a time when battleships usually mounted only four big guns and an array of smaller weapons, Dreadnought’s ten big 305mm guns made all other battleships out-of-date. Powered by new steam turbines she had a top speed of 21 knots, 3 knots faster than battleships with traditional piston engines.

Dreadnought was the idea of Admiral Sir John Fisher who became First Sea Lord in 1904. Fisher wanted to replace battleships with fast all-big-gun armoured cruisers, called battlecruisers, which could deal with both battleships and cruisers. Armour was not as important as big guns that could penetrate any armour at long range. Fisher’s colleagues at the Admiralty were not so revolutionary, so Fisher gave in and built an all-big-gun battleship, Dreadnought, instead.

In the same way as HMS Warrior almost fifty years before, the construction of Dreadnought was intended by Fisher to deter Britain’s enemy, in this case Germany, through a demonstration of technological excellence and to indicate that any challenge to British naval supremacy would be futile.

Dreadnought was flagship of the Fourth Battle Squadron at the time of The Battle of Jutland in 1916. On 29 March 1915 she rammed and sank the German submarine U-29. She remains the only battleship to have sunk a submarine. Compare the statistics for HMS Dreadnought and for pre-dreadnought battleship HMS King Edward VII completed only a year earlier:

My Postcards

Postally used 5 Aug 1907

 

Postally used 21 Nov 1906.

 

Postally used 1 Jan 1910. (New year's Day)
Postcard series: Gale & Polden Ltd

 

Not postally used.
Postcard series: Gale & Polden Ltd

 

Postally used 18 Apr 1908 from Portsmouth.
Postcard series: FGO Stuart
Postcard number: 1352

 

HMS Dreadnought

Not postally used.
Postcard series: S Hildesheimer & Co Ltd, Battleship Series
Series number: 5537
Postcard artist: H Buck

 

Postally used 8 Nov 1915.
Postcard series: Hutson Bros, London

 

Not postally used.

 

Postally used 14 Nov 1914.

 

Postally used 3 Nov 1906.
Postcard series: Gale & Polden Ltd, Nelson Series

 

Postally used 2 Jul 1918. Appears to be sent by s serving seaman on HMS Dreadnought.
Postcard series: Tuck's, Oilette - Guardians of the Empire's City
Postcard number: 8726

 

Postally used 10 Sep 1908.
Postcard series: Tuck's, Oilette - Our Ironclads - HMS Dreadnought
Series number: 9472

 

Postally used 5 October 1914.
Postcard series: Tuck's, Oilette - Guardians of the Empire's City
Postcard number: 8726

 

Not postally used.
Postcard series: Rotary Photographic

 

Postally used 4 May 1912.
Postcard series: C W Faulkner Ltd
Series number: 894

 

Return to Postcard Collection

Return to Lindy's Pages