Gunships at the time were very small vessels mainly used for colonial policing.
What do dreadnought and pre dreadnought type ships get called if Dreadnought wasn’t the first?
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Both the Admiral and Trafalgar classes (and Devastation before them) were rather low freeboard, which was what I was talking about the effective split of capital ships in the ironclad era: the true ocean ironclads with high freeboard but lacking (or at best side mounted) turrets and turreted but low freeboard. The Royal Sovereign and Majestic finally went "why not both?" and did exactly that. That's the revolutionary aspect.
Dreadnought was merely bigger, faster, stronger (basic pop evolution all things considered, not to mention the real game changer of director firing didn't even show up until a couple of classes later), and the particular ship in question managed to finish before her evolutionary predecessor intermediates (the Lord Nelson class) which is more a testament of UK shipbuilding prowess and Fisher's drive. If she was delayed in launch after these (or even the other) "semi-dreadnoughts", then her evolutionary-ness would have been much clearer.
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They were effectively the Trafalgars with higher freeboard. That is evolutionary. Lumping the Sovereigns and Majestics into one is also misleading, they were some four years apart and you can see the evolution of the design from that. Royal Sovereigns main guns were mounted in open pear shaped barbettes to compensate for the higher freeboard, Hood, with enclosed turrets had much lower freeboard. You then saw more improvement with smaller battleships like Renown and Centurion which had smaller turreted guns and high freeboard, then ultimately culminating in the Majestics.
Wasn't the way the cookie crumbled.
Nonsuch's ??
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I think that one big thing would be how easy it is to say. "Dreadnaught" is nice and compact and easy. Minas Gerias (SP?) is not. Likewise, Iowa might stick better than New Hampshire, which is longer.
The main reason I'm keeping "Iowas" is that, aside from the revolutionary nature of the ship, the furor over her design won't have really died down when she shows what she can do. Otherwise, "Superbattleships" might have become the new term. (Iowa will have blown several enemy ships to tiny pieces from unheard of range before anyone else even has one on the building ways. Of course, just because others build ships with a lot of big guns doesn't )
You can also go further afield with some slang terms for them
"Division ships," later shortened to "Divs" or some such, because one of them has the firepower of a division of old style ships.
"Anchors" if the idea was to build just a few to serve as the anchor of the battle line--has unfortunate implications, though.
"Anchors" if the first 2 or 3 ran into bad luck in their first engagement, and sunk.
"Desiccated ships" because like desiccated food, they pack a lot of mean into a small package. People being people, soon enough, they are "Desecrated Ships." That could even modify to "Devil ships" in slang.
"Follies" if they were thought to be a bad idea, until they showed that they weren't.
(Remember, "Tank" has no reasonable tie-in to what it does.)
Interesting POD: The very first all big gun ships,,say 2-4 of them--are all that are in service when The War breaks out, and due to simple bad luck, a design flaw, clever use of submarines, or whatever, all or most of the ones in commission are sunk within days of the start of the war. Some might fault the ships--especially if the admiral commanding them is one of Those Who Must Not Be Blamed.
The main reason I'm keeping "Iowas" is that, aside from the revolutionary nature of the ship, the furor over her design won't have really died down when she shows what she can do. Otherwise, "Superbattleships" might have become the new term. (Iowa will have blown several enemy ships to tiny pieces from unheard of range before anyone else even has one on the building ways. Of course, just because others build ships with a lot of big guns doesn't )
You can also go further afield with some slang terms for them
"Division ships," later shortened to "Divs" or some such, because one of them has the firepower of a division of old style ships.
"Anchors" if the idea was to build just a few to serve as the anchor of the battle line--has unfortunate implications, though.
"Anchors" if the first 2 or 3 ran into bad luck in their first engagement, and sunk.
"Desiccated ships" because like desiccated food, they pack a lot of mean into a small package. People being people, soon enough, they are "Desecrated Ships." That could even modify to "Devil ships" in slang.
"Follies" if they were thought to be a bad idea, until they showed that they weren't.
(Remember, "Tank" has no reasonable tie-in to what it does.)
Interesting POD: The very first all big gun ships,,say 2-4 of them--are all that are in service when The War breaks out, and due to simple bad luck, a design flaw, clever use of submarines, or whatever, all or most of the ones in commission are sunk within days of the start of the war. Some might fault the ships--especially if the admiral commanding them is one of Those Who Must Not Be Blamed.
Dreadnought is also nationalistically neutral unlike the names of places, battles or heros.
Interesting, I drew up a similar concept years ago without knowing about that.Nonsuch's ??
All the World's Battlecruisers-Jacky Fisher’s 1882 “battle cruisers” HMS Nonsuch and Inflexible.
On this thread ‘[url=a-second-drake-at-coronel-t8788.html#unread]a-second-drake-at-coronel-t8788.html#unread[/url]’, PMN1 asked me if I had any in
Nonsuchs....
Nelson, Anson, Drake, Collingwood, Hardy, if for a famed hero.
Also what would be the name for CF Martin large body guitar be, if not Dreadnought?
Also what would be the name for CF Martin large body guitar be, if not Dreadnought?
He was Italian, but yeah, he was someone who was a big advocate of developing what we'd consider dreadnoughts.
Maybe just "super battleships"? It sounds dumb but it sounds like something the American media would come up with. It might distinguish them from plain old battleships AKA pre dreadnoughts.
marathag
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During WWI, the Pennsylvania class were called 'Super-Dreadnought' in the popular Press
the text, since I couldn't put a larger photo here
This was National Geographic or Scientific American in 1916
Is a more generic term likely?
Battleship is pretty (too?) obvious, but ironclad was a Thing until the standards changed.
What about simply fast battleship? Heavy battleship? Lineship? (Too twee?) Turret or centerline-gun battleship?
I realize none have quite the panache of Dreadnought (or even ironclad or Monitor, for all that)...
Battleship is pretty (too?) obvious, but ironclad was a Thing until the standards changed.
What about simply fast battleship? Heavy battleship? Lineship? (Too twee?) Turret or centerline-gun battleship?
I realize none have quite the panache of Dreadnought (or even ironclad or Monitor, for all that)...
Its worth noting that the adoption of terms wasn't instantaneous. Pre-dreadnoughts were called battleships until they weren't.
After dreadnought for a period of time dreadnoughts were referred to in press sources and in parliament as battleships of the newest types while pre-dreadnoughts were referred to as older battleships.
I'm not sure when the practice of referring to dreadnoughts as dreadnoughts and older battleships as pre-dreadnoughts occurred but it was obviously in place by 1914.
After dreadnought for a period of time dreadnoughts were referred to in press sources and in parliament as battleships of the newest types while pre-dreadnoughts were referred to as older battleships.
I'm not sure when the practice of referring to dreadnoughts as dreadnoughts and older battleships as pre-dreadnoughts occurred but it was obviously in place by 1914.
In British press any battleship with 13.5 inch guns or bigger tended to be called super-dreadnoughts. So anything after the Orion class.