Canopus class battleship
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| Canopus-class |  |
|---|---|
| Specifications | |
| Displacement: | 13,150t |
| Length: | 430 ft (131.1 m) |
| Beam: | 74 ft (22.6 m) |
| Draught: | 26 ft (7.9 m) |
| Propulsion: | 2 shafts, water tube boilers, vertical triple expansion steam engines, 15,400 ihp = 18 kt |
| Complement: | 750 |
| Armament: | 4-12 in, 12-6 in, 10-3 in, 4-18 in TT (sub) |
The Canopus-class was a six-ship class of pre-Dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy designed by Sir William White. The ships were designed for service in the Far East, where the new rising power Japan was beginning to build a powerful and dangerous navy and would prove itself against the Russian Navy in 1905 at the Battle of Tsushima.
They were lighter in comparison to the Majestics, the benchmark ship for subsequent battleship classes, and were only slightly longer in length at 430 ft. The Canopus-class also changed armour type; their predecessors used Harvey, while the Canopus-class, used Krupp, made under license, perversely, from the nation that Canopus and her sister-ships would be at war with only a few years later.
The lead ship of the class launched in 1897. She commissioned with two of her sister-ships in 1900, but just six years later, they would all be obsolete upon the launching of the first all big-gun battleship, HMS Dreadnought, a ship that would revolutionise the battleship and consign all battleships before her to irrelevance, so much so that they would become pre-dreadnoughts and all successors of the revolutionary ship would become simply known as dreadnoughts.
The ships would remain in service despite this, seeing action during World War I, especially during the Dardanelles Campaign, where all ships of the class saw service, with two of them being sunk in that campaign. All surviving ships were scrapped by the early 1920s.
| Canopus-class battleship |
| Albion | Canopus | Glory | Goliath | Ocean | Vengeance |
List of battleships of the Royal Navy |
