Fisher demanded two final and key specifications—containment of the Dreadnought’s overall size and cost—that stemmed as much from political as from purely naval considerations. Although more powerful than any of her predecessors, the new ship was not to be much larger or more expensive than the twins, Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, which had just been laid down in October and November 1904. Dreadnought was only eighty-five feet longer, two and a half feet wider, and 1,400 tons heavier than these pre-dreadnought battleships and she was to cost only an additional £181,000. Because of her revolutionary design, Fisher reasoned, the ship would be subjected to many criticisms. He did not mean to abet this criticism with excessive size and cost and see his brainchild sink in Parliament.
On February 22, 1905, after only seven weeks of deliberation, the design committee submitted its recommendations. Fisher immediately went to work. The Admiralty’s policy, he declared, would be to lay down the ship as soon as possible, and by giving the project the highest priority, to complete the vessel within a year of launching.
No new British battleships would be designed until the Dreadnought had gone to sea and the results of her trials evaluated. The two big pre-dreadnought battleships Lord Nelson and Agamemnon were too far along to be redesigned and would be completed as originally planned, but work on them would slow as priority was given to the Dreadnought. Lord Nelson’s and Agamemnon’s first sacrifice would be the eight twelve-inch guns scheduled to be divided between them; these were commandeered for the Dreadnought.
Fisher intended from the beginning to electrify the world with a record building time for the Dreadnought, and he carefully selected the dockyard to achieve his purpose. The Royal Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth could build more rapidly than any other private or naval yard. Portsmouth’s record building time for a battleship was thirty-one months; Fisher wanted the Dreadnought18 built in twelve. Seven hull models were built and tested in the Admiralty tank at Haslar. Eventually, a shape was found which would require only 23,000 horsepower, not 28,000 as expected, to drive 17,000 tons through the water at twenty-one knots. This saving in engine weight was transferred to armor. Wherever possible, novelty was introduced as simplicity. Much of the saving in time was achieved by standardization. Instead of having each of the ship’s great steel plates cut individually, he ordered them in advance by the dozen in standard sizes and had them piled up in readiness in the yard.
In London, Fisher also was moving at full speed. Parliament was informed of the general plan and the basic dimensions of the ship in the First Lord’s Statement on Naval Estimates in March 1905. By then, of course, the Admiralty already had issued orders for construction materials; Fisher had Balfour’s promise that the Estimates would be accepted by the Commons. On June 24, 1905, the main propulsion machinery—turbines, pipes, boilers—was ordered. In July, the first 2,200 tons of steel plates and other structural material arrived in Portsmouth and were stacked for future use. In August, the ship’s armor was ordered and by September 1, 1,100 men were engaged in sorting, preparing, and assembling materials. The Dreadnought’s keel was laid on Monday, October 2, 1905. Thereafter, work accelerated. On Wednesday, October 4, the first middle deck beams and inner bottom plates were fitted to the keel. By Saturday the seventh, most of the middle deck beams were in position. A week later, on Saturday the fourteenth, the middle deck plating was installed. The main deck beams went in on November 25 and on December 28, the center lines of her propeller shafts were sited in. By the last day of the year, the hull was almost complete. This rate of building was unprecedented and, in recognition, on January 1, 1906, Thomas Mitchell, the Chief Constructor of the Portsmouth dockyard, was knighted.
By early February, four months after the keel was laid, the hull was ready. The Admiralty chose for the ship the ancient and illustrious name Dreadnought, previously borne by eight Royal Navy vessels.fn2 The King was invited to launch the ship. King Edward came down to Portsmouth on Friday afternoon, February 9, bringing a triumphant Jacky Fisher as his guest on the royal train. The Queen did not come because her father, King Christian IX of Denmark, had died a few days before. When the train arrived at the dockside jetty at six P.M., the monarch led his guests on board the Victoria and Albert for dinner and the night. The weather that day had been cold and bright, and the sunset light on Portsmouth harbor that evening reminded one observer of a Turner. All night, however, the barometer fell and by early Saturday morning a southwesterly gale was bringing rain in sheets. At nine A.M. the King’s guests breakfasted on the yacht and apprehensively looked out through rain-blurred windows. By mid-morning, the rain had stopped and the sun shone through fitfully between scudding banks of clouds.
All morning, special trains from London had been disgorging crowds of spectators at Portsmouth station. By ten A.M. people were streaming through the main gate of the navy yard and wending their way along the network of dockyard roads and lanes, past huge workshops of brick and corrugated iron, to the north corner of the yard, where the Dreadnought was waiting. There, they saw the huge hull resting in its cradle, the lower half painted a reddish brown, the upper half, which would rise above the waterline, a bluish gray. The hull was supported by only a few of the large wooden blocks which had held it during construction. Most had already been removed and the last few were being knocked away by gangs of men who were singing “Rule, Britannia!”, “Suwanee River,” and “Lead, Kindly Light” as they worked. Towering over the crowd rose the great hull itself and before the bow, an enormous wooden platform on which the King and a thousand dignitaries and guests were to stand during the ceremonies.
King Edward, wearing his uniform of Admiral of the Fleet with its cocked hat and his broad blue ribbon of the Order of the Garter, left the yacht at eleven-fifteen A.M. and boarded his train for the short trip through the yard. The death of his father-in-law had curtailed some of the planned display, but the King’s train nevertheless passed between solid lines of sailors and marines along a route which included four triumphal arches draped with naval flags and scarlet bunting. At eleven-thirty the train arrived beneath the wooden platform and the King climbed stairs lined with red and white satin to find himself in an enclosure surrounded by admirals, government officials, a naval choir, members of the press, and all the foreign naval attachés, senior among them Rear Admiral Carl Coeper of the Imperial German Navy. Over their heads loomed the bow of the Dreadnought, garlanded with red and white geraniums.
Fisher was irrepressible. Standing next to the King, he was seen continually gesturing and describing features of the ship. The Bishop of Winchester began the service with the 107th Psalm: “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep,” and ended it by raising his hand to bless the ship and all who would sail in her. When the last blocks had been knocked away and the Dreadnought was held only by a single, symbolic cable, the King plucked a bottle of Australian wine from a nest of flowers before him and swung it against the bow. The bottle bounced back. Again His Majesty swung and this time the bottle shattered and wine splashed down the steel plates. “I christen you Dreadnought!” cried the King. Then, taking a chisel and a wooden mallet made from the timbers of Nelson’s Victory, he went to work on the symbolic rope holding the ship in place. This time, one stroke did the job. The great ship stirred. Slowly at first, then with increasing momentum, she glided backwards down the greased building way. A few minutes later, the giant hull floated serenely on the water, corraled by a flotilla of paddle tugs. The band played “God Save the King,” the crowd gave three cheers, and His Majesty descended the steps, reboarded his train, and returned to the Victoria and Albert, which cast off immediately for Cowes in a fresh storm of rain and wind.
The launching of the great ship made news around the world. From Washington, the London Times’ correspondent reported: “The building and launching19 of the Dreadnought have aroused interest here which is both professional and political. Nobody is more interested than
the President [Theodore Roosevelt] to whom all things naval are of deep concern. That such a ship could have been built so quickly and so secretly astonishes naval experts.” The New York Times worried about the close connection between Great Britain and a nation which worried Americans: Japan. “The Dreadnought is a symbol20 of the effectiveness, the sincerity, and the power of the alliance between Great Britain and Japan, for she is a direct outcome of the naval lessons of the Russo-Japanese War. It is now known, though it was quite unknown while the war lasted, that Great Britain was permitted by Japan to station naval attachés in the vessels of Admiral Togo’s fleet... it is hinted that they included at least one naval constructor. The results of what they learned are all to be incorporated in the giant Dreadnought.”
In the months that followed, the empty hull was converted into a ship. The hull is the easiest part of a warship to build; the engines take longer; turrets, gun mountings, and guns take longest. On February 15, 1906, only five days after the launching, Fisher again speeded up her schedule. Now the ship was to be completed by January 1, 1907, rather than by mid-February of that year. The acceleration meant another increase in effort for the Portsmouth navy yard. Normal working hours were eight and a half hours a day, beginning at seven A.M., five and a half days a week. The Dreadnought’s builders began at six A.M. and worked eleven and a half hours a day, six days a week. Of the eight thousand men employed by the yard, three thousand were at work on this single ship.
By March 2, 1906, all the ship’s boilers were on board and two thousand tons of armor plate had been bolted into position. A month later, the total weight of the ship was 10,000 tons. In May, the first turbines arrived from Parsons and the weight of the ship reached 11,500 tons. By May 23 she received her sixth coat of paint. In June, all of her turbines were installed and six of the 12-inch guns had been hoisted into position. The ship’s weight reached 13,100 tons. In July, the other four 12-inch guns were mounted and the ship weighed 14,000 tons. By August 3,15,380 tons had been worked into the ship and her foremast was raised above the superstructure. On September 1, the Dreadnought was placed in reserve commission and the first members of a nucleus crew came aboard to sling their hammocks in her spaces.
The Dreadnought tested her engines alongside a dock. “It was an exciting moment21 when steam was first put into the turbines,” recalled Bacon, the ship’s first captain. “How would they work? The clearance between the thousands of blades on the rotating and static drums was a matter of a few thousandths of an inch only. One defective blade might become loose, come out, and strip the turbines completely.” There were stories of shattered turbines whose blades had been removed by the bucketful. Happily, the Dreadnought’s turbines worked splendidly. The boilers were fired up, steam was let gently into the turbines, the rotors turned, blades revolved precisely as designed, and then the engines were cut off.
On October 1, 1906, a year and a day from the laying of her keel, H.M.S. Dreadnought went to sea. Bacon was on the bridge. Leaving her fitting-out basin, the battleship had an embarrassing moment: she got stuck in the basin entrance. There was plenty of water under her keel, but the basin had been built when ships did not bulge as much under water as the Dreadnought did. Fortunately, the tide still had another hour to rise; at full tide, the Dreadnought barely slipped out. Bacon did not enjoy imagining the glee of the ship’s critics had she had to wait while her turrets were lifted off to reduce her draft and permit an escape.
The Dreadnought’s first excursion into the English Channel was for contractor’s trials, prescribed tests of her seaworthiness and capabilities before formal acceptance into the Royal Navy. It was quickly apparent that she took the sea well. Because of her size and the height of her bows, she steamed at 19 knots through fifteen-foot waves, remaining steady and keeping her fore turret dry. On October 3 and 4, she steamed for thirty hours at moderate speed with all gauges holding firm. On the fourth and fifth she conducted a series of high-speed, three-hour runs. The new turbine system, Bacon signaled the Admiralty, was “markedly successful.” On October 6, he was handed a telegram from Balmoral: “The King is greatly pleased22 at the satisfactory report of Dreadnought’s trials.” On October 8, the battleship steamed for eight hours at full speed without incident and the following day returned to port, her officers jubilant.
The battleship sailed again on October 17, this time to fire her guns. The Dreadnought’s full broadside was a matter of concern to her designers, the Admiralty, and above all, to the officers and men on board. No one knew whether or how badly the recoil effect of eight huge guns fired simultaneously would damage the ship. For the occasion, an anxious Sir Philip Watts, the ship’s designer, had come on board to see what happened. Seeking the best spot from which to observe the effect of the broadside on the ship’s structure, Watts left the bridge and placed himself on the mess deck. “He looked very grave and serious,”23 said Bacon of Watts. “I am quite sure that he fully expected the decks to come down wholesale. Presently, there was a muffled roar and a bit of a kick on the ship. The eight guns had been fired and scores of men between the decks had no idea what happened.”
Trials continued through October and November, and on December 3, the Dreadnought returned to the Portsmouth yard. On December 11, 1906, three weeks short of Fisher’s accelerated schedule, H.M.S. Dreadnought was accepted into the Royal Navy. These records—a year and a day from laying the keel to going to sea; ten months from launching to full commissioning into the navy—had never been equalled in the history of capital ships. Previous to that, the average building time for British battleships had been thirty-three months. No battleship had been built in less than thirty-one months.
Early in the new year, 1907, Bacon took the Dreadnought on her first voyage. She steamed down the Atlantic coast of Spain to Gibraltar and then into the Mediterranean, where the Home Fleet, commanded by Sir Arthur Wilson, was cruising off the north coast of Sardinia. During this voyage, a major steering problem came to light. When the Dreadnought was moving faster than 15 knots and the helm was put over more than 10 degrees, the vessel had so much momentum that the rudder engine could not bring the rudder back to zero; thus the ship continued turning in a circle. In the Strait of Bonifacio off Corsica, this defect caused a near collision. Bacon did not report the problem immediately to the Admiralty. The difficulty could be fixed with a stronger rudder engine once they returned to England; meanwhile he could stay out of trouble by limiting turns at higher speeds. If he had made a report, he probably would not have been allowed to proceed on the next phase of his ship’s shakedown cruise, a 10,000-mile round-trip voyage across the Atlantic to the West Indies. Keeping mum, Bacon returned to Gibraltar, coaled his ship, and sailed westward, maintaining a constant speed of seventeen knots for 3400 miles. His destination was Trinidad, selected by Fisher for its remoteness from the eyes of British critics and foreign naval attachés. There, for six weeks, the new battleship carried out extensive tests on her guns and machinery. One night, intending to check her searchlights, Bacon took the big ship into the mouth of a small creek and dropped anchor. The plunging anchor stirred up the largest shark Bacon had ever seen, “a great, white-bellied brute24 who rose to the surface to see what had happened to disturb its habitual quiet.” When the crew saw the fish, their enthusiasm for tropical swimming dwindled.
The Dreadnought’s return to England was marred by new troubles. Bacon came down with malarial fever of 103 degrees, a recurrence of an illness contracted as a young officer in a naval landing-party expedition against African headhunters in 1897. One of the ship’s boiler tubes burst, injuring three men. And the ship almost ran out of coal. Steaming nonstop for ten days across the Atlantic, the Dreadnought arrived at Spithead down to her last eighteen tons, enough for about four hours of steaming.
Upon her return to England, the Dreadnought became the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet. In the spring of 1907, she made a series of visits to ports around the British Isles, and in June she traveled across the North
Sea to Bergen, Norway. From July 30 to August 7 she was at Spithead for the annual naval review and there, on August 5, 1907, King Edward paid her another visit, this time bringing the Queen and the Prince of Wales. With Fisher standing at his elbow on the bridge, the King watched the hoisting of both the Royal Standard and his personal flag as an Admiral of the Fleet. At ten A.M. the ship weighed anchor and steamed down the lines of anchored battleships and cruisers whose cheering crews lined the rails. Reaching the sea, the Dreadnought increased speed to twenty knots. A party of journalists invited on board were surprised by the absence of vibration. The naval correspondent of The Times went below to the starboard engine room and subsequently told his readers: “It was far cooler25 than any other engine room I have visited; there were no moving parts visible except the governors of the two turbines and there was very little noise. As to the engineers in charge, they seemed to have very little or nothing to do except to stand by for orders from the bridge.”
The main purpose of the excursion was to demonstrate to the royal party the firing of the battleship’s 12-inch guns. Once south of the Isle of Wight, the Dreadnought’s two after turrets trained around to slightly ahead of amidships and then, with the monarchs watching from the bridge, opened fire. The Queen, peering aft at the muzzles of the guns, was startled by the flame and blast as the projectiles belched forth. In less than three minutes, twelve rounds had been fired, six by each turret, and the exercise was over. The targets, two floating canvas structures fourteen feet by fourteen feet, were only a mile and a half away, the range being drastically cut so that the King and Queen could observe the shells either striking the targets or falling into the sea. In spite of the close range, the marksmanship was impressive: of twelve rounds fired, eleven hit the target and nine were bull’s-eyes. This shooting was even more impressive to The Times’ correspondent when he discovered that the firing had been done, not by specially picked gunnery marksmen, but by the regular gun crews which manned the two turrets.