HMS Britannia (1904)
HMS Britannia
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Britannia |
| Namesake: | Britannia, the Roman name for the island of Great Britain and the name of a Roman province there |
| Ordered: | 1903/04 Estimates |
| Builder: | Portsmouth Dockyard |
| Cost: | £1,408,053 |
| Laid down: | 4 February 1904 |
| Launched: | 10 December 1904 |
| Completed: | September 1906 |
| Commissioned: | 8 September 1906 |
| Nickname(s): | The King Edward VII-class battleships were known as "The Wobbly Eight" |
| Fate: | Torpedoed and sunk 9 November 1918 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | King Edward VII-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 453 ft 6 in (138.23 m) |
| Beam: | 78 ft (24 m) |
| Draught: | 26 ft 9 in (8.15 m) |
| Installed power: | 18,000 ihp (13 MW) |
| Propulsion: | 15 coal-fired boilers (with oil sprayers), 12 Babcock & Wilcox water-tube and 3 cylindrical, two 4-cylinder vertical compound expansion steam engines, two screws |
| Speed: | 18.5 knots (34.3 km/h) |
| Range: | 2,000 nautical miles (3,704 km) at 18.5 knots (34 km/h); 5,270 nautical miles (9,760 km) at 10 knots (18.5 km/h) |
| Complement: | 777 |
| Armament: |
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| Armour: |
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| Notes: | 2,164–2,238 tons coal maximum; 380 tons oil |
HMS Britannia was a King Edward VII-class pre-dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy. She was named after Britannia, the Latin name of Great Britain under Roman rule. After commissioning in September 1906, she served briefly with the Atlantic and Channel Fleets before joining the Home Fleet. In 1912, she, along with her sister ships of the King Edward VII class, was assigned to the 3rd Battle Squadron but in June 1913, she returned to duties with the Home Fleet.
When the First World War broke out, Britannia was transferred back to the 3rd Battle Squadron, which was part of the Grand Fleet. In 1916, she was attached to the 2nd Detached Squadron, then serving in the Adriatic Sea. After a refit in 1917, she conducted patrol and convoy escort duties in the Atlantic. On 9 November 1918, just two days before the end of the war, she was torpedoed by a German submarine off Cape Trafalgar and sank with the loss of 50 men.
HMS Britannia was built at Portsmouth Dockyard. She was laid down on 4 February 1904, launched on 10 December 1904, and completed in September 1906.
Although Britannia and her seven sister ships of the King Edward VII class were a direct descendant of the Majestic class, they were also the first class to make a significant departure from the Majestic design, displacing about 1,000 tons more and mounting for the first time an intermediate battery of four 9.2-inch (234-mm) guns in addition to the standard outfit of 6-inch (152-mm) guns. The 9.2-inch was a quick-firing gun like the 6-inch, and its heavier shell made it a formidable weapon by the standards of the day when Britannia and her sisters were designed; it was adopted out of concerns that British battleships were undergunned for their displacement and were becoming outgunned by foreign battleships that had begun to mount 8-inch (203-mm) intermediate batteries. The four 9.2-inch were mounted in single turrets abreast the foremast and mainmast, and Britannia thus could bring two of them to bear on either broadside. Even then, Britannia and her sisters were criticised for not having a uniform secondary battery of 9.2-inch guns, something considered but rejected because of the length of time it would have taken to design the ships with such a radical revision of the secondary armament layout. In the end, it proved impossible to distinguish 12-inch and 9.2-inch shell splashes from one another, making fire control impractical for ships mounting both calibres, although Britannia had fire-control platforms on her fore- and mainmasts rather than the fighting tops of earlier classes.
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