Page 73 - NS-2 Textbook

66 MARITIME HISTORY

Beginning in 1903, the Navy began building two cap- the launching of the first battleships of the 27,500-ton
ital ships (large warships) a yem; a trend that would con- Queen Elizabeth class. These developments were soon re-
tinue for about the next fifteen years, through the Roo- flected in subsequent warships built by other world-class
sevelt administration and that of William Howard Taft, navies, including the United States.
who succeeded him from 1909 to 1913. The size of these Advances also were being made in other fields of
ships continually increased, both in displacement and ar- naval teclmology. In 1900 Roosevelt urged the Navy to
mament. In 1905 Congress authorized the battleships buy its first submarine, the Hal/and, named after her in-
Michigan and South Cal'Olina, both of which would have ventor. Submarines developed rapidly after this, in all of
eight 12-inch gtms arranged in two pairs of turrets fore the world's major navies. Roosevelt ,\-vas also a prime
and aft. supporter of experin1ents with marmed aircraft, which
111en in 1907 catne a warship that would set the stan- had beglm in 1898, and culminated with the Wright
dards for all capital ships thereafter: the British battle- brothers' first successful heavier-than-air flight at Kitty
ship Dreadnought. Her main battery (primary armatnent) Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. In 1910 Eugene Ely flew
consisted of ten 12-inch guns mounted in five turrets, an airplane off a platform built on the bow of the cruiser
and because the U.S. ships were still on the building USS Birmingham. A few months latet; he made the
ways, this gave her two and a half times the firepower of world's first arrested shipboard lat1ding in lines strung
any other battleship then afloat. She was also the first across the deck of the cruiser Pennsylvania, thus setting
large ship to be powered by turbine engines, which gave the stage for the development of the aircraft carrier.
her a maxinmm speed of 21 knots, faster than at1y other But hardware was not the only area in which the U.S.
battleship. The Dreadnought became the type name for all Navy in1proved in the years following the turn of the
big-gun battleships launched after her, and all the battle- cenhrry. The technology being incorporated into the
ships with smaller glms that preceded her catne to be newer ships demanded highly specialized at1d trained
called predreadnoughts. In 1912 the British pioneered the crews to operate them. Because of their relatively high
use of oil instead of coal as fuel for large battleships, with standards of living at1d education, yotmg Americat1S

A contemporary photograph of the British battleship HMS Dreadnought. She set the standards for all subsequent capital ships. At the time of
her launching in 1907 she had two and a half times the firepower of any other battleship then in existence.