HMS Commonwealth (1903)
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HMS Commonwealth in 1907–1908
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Commonwealth |
| Namesake: | The Commonwealth of Australia |
| Ordered: | 1903 naval programme |
| Builder: | Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Govan |
| Cost: | £1,471,527 |
| Laid down: | 17 June 1902 |
| Launched: | 13 May 1903 |
| Completed: | March 1905 |
| Commissioned: | 9 May 1905 |
| Decommissioned: | February 1921 |
| Nickname(s): | The King Edward VII-class battleships were known as "The Wobbly Eight" |
| Fate: | Sold for scrapping 18 November 1921 |
| Notes: | Served as seagoing gunnery training ship 1918–1921 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | King Edward VII-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 453 ft 8 in (138.28 m) |
| Beam: | 78 ft (24 m) |
| Draught: | 25 ft 6 in (7.77 m) |
| Installed power: | 18,000 ihp |
| Propulsion: | 16 coal-fired (with oil sprayers) Babcock & Wilcox water-tube boilers, 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 |
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| Armor: |
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| Notes: | Provided with many advanced fittings during her 1917–1918 reconstruction, bringing her in line with modern dreadnought battleship standards |
HMS Commonwealth, was a King Edward VII-class battleship of the British Royal Navy. Like all ships of the class (apart from HMS King Edward VII) she was named after an important part of the British Empire, namely the Commonwealth of Australia. After commissioning in 1905, she served with the Atlantic Fleet until she was involved in a collision with HMS Albemarle in early 1907. While being repaired, she was transferred into what would become known as the Home Fleet. Following a reorganisation of the fleet in 1912, she, along with her King Edward VII-class sister ships formed the 3rd Battle Squadron, which served in the Mediterranean.
When World War I broke out, the 3rd Battle Squadron was assigned to the Grand Fleet, with Commonwealth conducting operations around Scotland and the North Sea as part of the Northern Patrol. In 1916, the squadron was detached to the Nore Command. In 1917, the Commonwealth was updated, the only ship of her class to receive technology equivalent to that of the dreadnoughts. She ended the war as a gunnery training ship, continuing in this role until February 1921, at which time she was decommissioned and disposed of.
HMS Commonwealth was built at Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan. She was laid down on 17 June 1902, launched on 13 May 1903, and completed in March 1905.
Although Commonwealth 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 the Commonwealth 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 Commonwealth thus could bring two of them to bear on either broadside. Even then, Commonwealth 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 Commonwealth had fire-control platforms on her fore- and mainmasts rather than the fighting tops of earlier classes.
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