Battleship
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A battleship was a heavily armored large warship with a main battery consisting of large guns, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the larg
USS Iowa firing a broadside
Napoléon (1850), the world's first steam-powered battleship
Gloire (1859), the first ocean-going ironclad warship
The German Brandenburg, which carried six heavy guns, rather than the standard four
Pre-dreadnought battleship
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Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built from the mid- to late- 1880s to the early 1900s. Their designs were conceived before the appearance of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 and their cl
Battleship
…in the 1870s and 1880s, ironclad design was largely standardized by the British Royal Sovereign class, which are usually referred to as the first "pre-dreadnought battleships". These ships carried an armament that usually included four large guns and several medium-caliber guns that were to be used against enemy battleships…
HMS Royal Sovereign (1891) was the first pre-dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy.
HMS Ocean was typical of pre-dreadnought battleships
HMS Dreadnought shows the low freeboard typical for early ironclad turret-ships. This ship, launched in 1875, should not be confused with her famous successor, launched in 1906, marking the end of the pre-dreadnought era.
The heavy guns and forward barbette of Mikasa's main battery