St Vincent-class battleship

St Vincent at anchor, 1909
Class overview
Name:	St Vincent class
Operators:	Royal Navy
Preceded by:	Bellerophon class
Succeeded by:	HMS Neptune
Built:	1907–1910
In service:	1910–1922
In commission:	1910–1922
Completed:	3
Lost:	1
Scrapped:	2
General characteristics (as built)
Type:	Dreadnought battleship
Displacement:	19,700 long tons (20,000 t) (normal)
Length:	536 ft (163.4 m) (o/a)
Beam:	84 ft 2 in (25.7 m)
Draught:	28 ft (8.5 m)
Installed power:	24,500 shp (18,300 kW) 18 × water-tube boilers
Propulsion:	4 × shafts; 2 × steam turbine sets
Speed:	21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph)
Range:	6,900 nmi (12,800 km; 7,900 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:	755–835
Armament:	5 × twin 12-inch (305 mm) guns 20 × single 4-inch (102 mm) guns 3 × 18-inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes
Armour:	Belt: 8–10 inches (203–254 mm) Bulkheads: 5 and 8 inches (127 and 203 mm) Deck: .75–3 inches (19–76 mm) Turrets: 11 inches (279 mm) Barbettes: 5–10 inches (127–254 mm) Conning towers: 8 and 11 in (203 and 279 mm)

The St Vincent-class battleships were a group of three dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The sister ships spent their entire careers assigned to the Home and Grand Fleets. Aside from participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and the inconclusive Action of 19 August several months later, their service during the First World War generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. Vanguard was destroyed in 1917 by a magazine explosion with the near total loss of her crew. The remaining pair were obsolete by the end of the war in 1918, and spent their remaining time either in reserve or as training ships before being sold for scrap in the early 1920s.

Vanguard's wreck was extensively salvaged before it was declared a war grave. Since 2002, it has been designated as a controlled site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 and diving on the wreck is generally forbidden.

The Admiralty's 1905 draft building plan called for four capital ships in the 1907–1908 Naval Programme, but the new Liberal government cut one of these ships in mid-1906 and postponed another to the 1908–1909 Naval Programme, pending the conclusion of the ongoing Hague Peace Convention. The failure of the Germans to agree to any sort of naval arms control caused the government to reinstate the third ship. The Admiralty took until 12 June 1907 to decide not to build one of them as a battlecruiser, in favour of a squadron of four homogeneous battleships. Three of these would be part of the St Vincent class, while the single battleship planned for the 1908–1909 Naval Programme was later authorised as HMS Neptune.