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Pre-dreadnought battleships were an ocean-going type of battleship built between the mid-1890s and 1905. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad battleship of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, and protected by hardened steel armour, pre-dreadnought battleships carried a main battery of very heavy guns in turrets supported by one or more secondary batteries of lighter weapons. They were powered by coal-fuelled triple-expansion steam engines. In the 1890s, navies worldwide started to build battleships to a common design—in contrast to the chaotic development of ironclad warships in preceding decades, dozens of ships worldwide essentially followed the design of the British Majestic class. The similar appearance of battleships in the 1890s was underlined by the increasing number of ships being built. New naval powers like Germany, Japan, and the USA began to establish themselves with fleets of pre-dreadnoughts, while the navies of Britain, France, and Russia expanded to meet the threat. The main clashes of pre-dreadnought fleets came during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. These dozens of battleships were abruptly made obsolete by the arrival of HMS Dreadnought in 1906. The existing battleships were decisively outclassed; new battleships were from then on known as dreadnoughts while the ships laid down previously were designated pre-dreadnoughts. (more...)
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