"Twilight of the Pre-Dreadnoughts and the Sinking of..." Topic

… HMS Goliath, May 13th 1915.

"At the start of World War I the major navies had significant numbers of pre-dreadnought battleships which, though in many cases only eight or ten years old, had been rendered wholly obsolete by the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought in 1905. This, the first turbine-driven, all-big gun, battleship, mounted ten 12" guns, compared with the almost universal armament of four 12-inch guns for the average pre-dreadnought, and set the model for all subsequent capital ships. By the outbreak of war in 1914 large numbers of "dreadnoughts" – the name had already come to symbolise a type – were in service in the larger navies. Putting obsolete pre-dreadnoughts into a battle-line which would have to face much more powerfully-armed dreadnoughts was likely to be little short of suicidal.

In 1914 the Royal Navy still has 39 pre-dreadnoughts while the French Navy had 26 (including several more heavily-armed "semi-dreadnoughts"). It was recognised that though they were unsuited to battle-fleet service they might still prove of value in secondary duties such as shore bombardment. In such cases low speed would be less of a concern and each ship would be capable of bringing four 12" weapons into play, plus large numbers of lower-calibre weapons.

It was the availability of large numbers of such pre-dreadnoughts that contributed to the decision to attempt forcing a passage through the Turkish-held Dardanelles Strait in 1915. Success in establishing a sea-route to the Russian Black Sea coast would allow supply of weapons and munitions to often-underequipped Russian land forces. Some have indeed argued that had this been achieved Russia might not have collapsed as it did in 1916/17 and that the Bolshevik Revolution might not have occurred. There also appears to have been some thinking that, in view of the large number of obsolete pre-dreadnoughts available, significant losses could be tolerated to achieve success. This argument ignored the fact that these ships carried large crews, and that the sinking of any one would mean a devastatingly high – and unacceptable – death-toll…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

A significant number of Allied pre-dreadnoughts were lost in WW1 – almost all to underwater attack by torpedo or mine. These ships were designed and built during a period when such dangers were not considered to be realistic, hence, no torpedo defense systems were incorporated. But perhaps the most fateful design feature was the widespread use of longitudinal (i.e. fore and aft) bulkheads in the machinery spaces; these fostered dramatically asymmetrical flooding when the underwater hull was breached and all but one (IIRC) of the lost pre-dreadnoughts succumbed to rapid capsize.

FWIW.

B

Thanks for the comment my friend.

Amicalement
Armand