Читать книгу Champions of the Fleet. Captains and men-of-war and days that helped to make the empire онлайн
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The Dreadnought carries eleven inches of Krupp steel armour on her sides, turrets, and conning tower, and rather thinner armour at the bows and stern. Her speed of twenty-one knots makes her a full two knots faster than any existing battleship. She is the first battleship in any navy to be propelled by the Parsons turbine, to which her speed is due. Lastly, the cost of the Dreadnought is officially stated at £1,797,497.
Exceptional in themselves, and of exceptional historic interest as well, are the honours that have fallen to the Dreadnought’s lot within the few months that our great naval masterpiece has been in existence.
At the outset the Dreadnought had the good fortune to be named and sent afloat by His Majesty King Edward personally. That in itself was an exceptional honour, and one that has fallen to the lot of very few ships of the Royal Navy—to be named and sent afloat by the reigning sovereign. There have been just six instances in all, from the earliest times to the present day. Queen Victoria launched four men-of-war during her long reign; but no King of England ever launched a ship in the four hundred years between King Edward and Henry the Eighth: King Edward with the Dreadnought and Henry the Eighth with the Great Harry are the two historic instances. Many of our sovereigns, of course—practically all of them: Edward the Sixth, Queen Elizabeth, the Stuart kings, Cromwell also, George the Third, and William the Fourth—attended in state on various occasions to witness the launch of some notable man-of-war, but they were present only as spectators, and took no part in the actual proceedings. Charles the First was to have personally named the famous Sovereign of the Seas, with the same ceremonial used at the launch of our first Dreadnought, and rode down with his Court to Woolwich to do so; but they could not get the ship out of dock, and the King rode back to Whitehall disappointed, deputing the Lord High Admiral to name the ship when she did get clear—not till between eight and nine in the evening. Charles the Second, in like manner, was to have personally named our first Britannia, but His Majesty was taken ill on the day before. Again too, as it also happened, there was a hitch at the launch. The Britannia stuck fast for twelve hours, and then went off at midnight to the flare of torches and cressets, after which a courier was hurried off at gallop to Whitehall, to acquaint the King, “lest certain base reports (i.e. that the Britannia had fallen over in dock) may have reached your Majesty.”