The King Edward VII class was a class of eight pre-dreadnought battleships launched by the Royal Navy between 1903 and 1905. The class comprised , the lead ship, , , , , , , and . They marked the first major development of the basic pre-dreadnought type that had been developed with the type of the mid-1890s, all of which had been designed by the Director of Naval Construction, William Henry White, with the primary innovation being the adoption of a heavy secondary battery of four guns to supplement the standard main battery of four guns. The King Edward VIIs were among the last pre-dreadnoughts built for the Royal Navy before the construction and launch of the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought in 1906, which immediately rendered them obsolescent.
The ships served with the Atlantic Fleet from 1905 to 1907, when they were transferred to the Channel Fleet, though this service lasted only until 1908–1909, when they were reassigned to the Home Fleet. During this period, King Edward VII served as fleet flagship as a result of a request from her namesake that she always serve as such. In 1911, New Zealand was renamed Zealandia. Africa and Hibernia were involved with experiments with seaplanes in 1912, and that year all members of the class were assigned to the 3rd Battle Squadron of the Home Fleet and were later sent to the Mediterranean Sea to respond to the First Balkan War.
By the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the King Edward VIIs were sent to the Grand Fleet to support the Northern Patrol and to conduct sweeps in the North Sea for German warships, though they never saw combat. In January 1916, King Edward VII struck a German naval mine and sank, though her crew was safely evacuated. By mid-1916, the surviving ships were no longer suitable for front-line fleet service, and so they were dispersed to other tasks, including coastal defence with the Nore Command and for operations in the Gallipoli Campaign. Africa was sent to the Atlantic Patrol in 1917 and was later stricken with Spanish flu, and Britannia was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat two days before the end of the war, one of the last British warships to be sunk in the conflict. The surviving members of the class were all sold for scrap in the early 1920s.
Design
Design work on what would become the King Edward VII class began in 1901; the Royal Navy had observed that foreign battleships, such as the Italian and the American , had begun to carry a heavy secondary battery of guns. The design staff, operating without the direction of the Director of Naval Construction, William Henry White, who was ill at the time, began a series of studies for a battleship based on the preceding armed with a secondary battery of or guns. The Assistant DNC, J. H. Narbeth, initially had a great deal of trouble arranging the guns such that the secondary turrets did not interfere with the main battery guns. After examining the directly superimposed turrets used in the Virginias, Narbeth concluded that it was not a workable solution, and so adopted an arrangement with four secondary turrets, one at each corner of the superstructure.
The Admiralty provisionally accepted a draft equipped with eight 7.5 in guns in twin gun turrets, but after White returned, he suggested the 9.2 in guns would be more effective against heavily armoured ships, and so the decision was made to switch to that armament. The heavy secondary guns added a great deal of weight high in the ship and they took up space on the deck, thus forcing the designers to make compromises to other aspects of the vessels, particularly the rest of the secondary battery. These guns, traditionally carried in casemates, were relocated to a central box battery, since it would require less armour to protect the guns in such a compact arrangement. They were also mounted lower relative to the waterline, owing to the decreased freeboard; this rendered the guns essentially unusable in anything but relatively calm seas. Combined with a higher metacentric height, the low freeboard of the King Edward VIIs made them prone to shipping water in heavy seas and excessive rolling.
Despite the problems with their secondary armament, the ships were significantly more powerful than earlier British battleships and they compared well with foreign contemporaries. They nevertheless suffered the same fate as all late pre-dreadnought battleships. Completed shortly before the advent of the all-big-gun in 1906, they were quickly rendered obsolescent, such that during the First World War, the King Edward VII-class ships were frequently deployed at the front of the dreadnought battle squadrons to screen them for naval mines, either by sighting or striking them before the dreadnoughts entered the area.
The King Edward VII class was the culmination of battleship design under the direction of White that had begun with the in the late 1880s. The follow-on class, the two s, were a major departure from previous designs and marked a transitional stage between pre-dreadnought and dreadnought-type battleships.
General characteristics
The ships of the King Edward VII class were long between perpendiculars and long overall. They had a beam of and a draft of . The King Edward VII-class ships were more than a thousand tons heavier than earlier battleships displacing normally and up to fully loaded. The ships had of freeboard forward, amidships, and aft. To save weight, the ships had their storage for food and other supplies reduced from a 4-month supply that was standard in previous designs to 3 months. Their crew varied over the course of their careers, ranging from 755 to 815; for example, after entering service, had a crew of 777 officers and ratings; crews tended to increase during wartime.
King Edward VII and her sister ships discarded the aft conning tower that was standard practice in favour of a torpedo control tower that directed the firing of the stern torpedo tubes. The ships were fitted with two heavy pole masts; their foremasts were equipped with tops used to mount wireless telegraphy and fire control equipment. , , Dominion, , and carried large, oval tops for most of their equipment and a smaller top below, while , , and had smaller, square tops, with two small tops lower on the masts.
The King Edward VIIs were the first British battleships with balanced rudders since the 1870s and were very manoeuvrable, with a tactical diameter of at . However, they were difficult to keep on a straight course, and this characteristic led to them being nicknamed "the Wobbly Eight" during their 1914–1916 service in the Grand Fleet. They had a slightly faster roll than previous British battleship classes, but were good gun platforms, although very wet in bad weather.
Machinery The King Edward VII-class ships were powered by a pair of 4-cylinder triple-expansion engines that drove two inward-turning screws, with steam provided by water-tube or fire-tube boilers of various types. King Edward VII had ten Babcock & Wilcox boilers and six Scotch marine boilers, while Africa, Britannia, Hindustan, and Hibernia received eighteen Babcock & Wilcox boilers and three cylindrical return tube boilers. New Zealand used eighteen Niclausse boilers and three of the cylindrical return tube boilers, and Dominion and Commonwealth had sixteen of the Babcock & Wilcox boilers only. The reason multiple boiler arrangements were adopted was to compare the effectiveness of different boiler types. In service, the ships with mixed boiler types proved to be something of a disappointment, since the differing boiler types added complications to the powerplant and hampered efficient operation; they produced no benefit in return, and the experiments were not repeated in subsequent designs. The boilers were trunked into two funnels located amidships. Primarily powered by coal, all of the class except New Zealand had oil sprayers installed during construction, the first time this had been done in British battleships. These allowed steam pressure to be rapidly increased, improving the acceleration of the ships; this ability later led to the decision to adopt all oil-fired boilers in the super-dreadnoughts. New Zealands Niclausse boilers could not be adapted to use the oil sprayers.
The King Edward VII-class ships had a top speed of from , though some of the ships exceeded on speed trials, including Dominion and Hindustan. Using only coal, the ships had a cruising radius of about at an economical speed of , and with the supplemental fuel oil, their range increased to .
Armament
The King Edward VIIs had four 12-inch 40-calibre Mk IX guns mounted in twin-gun turrets fore and aft. The guns were carried in BVIIS-type mountings, which had a range of elevation from −5 degrees to +13.5 degrees and allowed loading the guns at any angle. The guns had a muzzle velocity of , and they were capable of penetrating 12 inches of Krupp armour at a range of . At their maximum elevation, the guns had a range of . Commonwealth and Zealandia later had their mounts modified to allow elevation to 30 degrees, which extended their maximum range significantly, to . These were supported by a heavy secondary battery of four guns in four single turrets, two on each broadside. The guns were carried in Mk VS mounts, which had a range of elevation from −7 to +15 degrees, allowing for a maximum range of . Muzzle velocity was .
The first five ships also mounted ten Mark VII 45-calibre guns, the same battery carried by earlier British battleships, though unlike earlier battleships, the King Edward VIIs mounted these guns in a central battery rather than in casemates. The guns had a muzzle velocity of , and they could penetrate six inches of Krupp armour at . Maximum elevation was 14 degrees, which allowed the guns to engage targets out to . The last three ships (Britannia, Africa and Hibernia) were instead fitted with 6-inch 50 calibre guns, which had been ordered for the Warrior-class armoured cruisers, but were surplus when it was decided to complete the Warriors with a secondary armament of guns. For defence against torpedo boats, they carried fourteen 12-pounder guns and fourteen 3-pounder guns that were dispersed in pivot mounts around the ship. As was customary for battleships of the period, they were also equipped with five torpedo tubes submerged in the hull; two were on each broadside, with the fifth in the stern.
Armour Most of the heavy armour of the King Edward VII class consisted of Krupp cemented armour; this included most of the belt armour, main and secondary turrets and their barbettes, and the conning tower. The armour layout of the King Edward VII class was very similar to the protection scheme used in the and London classes, with the primary change being the adoption of the armoured box for the 6-inch guns, rather than individual, armoured casemates. They had an armoured belt that was thick in the main portion of the belt; the transverse bulkhead on the aft end of the belt was thick. Aft of the transverse bulkhead, the side of the ship was protected with of Krupp non-cemented plate. Forward of the fore barbette, the belt was reduced to , then tapered to , then to at the extreme end of the bow. The upper edge of the main belt was reduced to thick, and above that was the battery deck for the 6-inch guns, which was protected with 7-inch-thick plate. The guns in the battery were divided with Krupp non-cemented screens.