British Battleship Dreadnought Country: UK Type: Battleship Service: 1906 - 1919 Ordered: 1905 Laid down: 2 October 1905 Launched: 10 February 1906 Commissioned: 2 December 1906 Decommissioned: 1919 Fate: Scrapped 1923

The HMS Dreadnought of the Royal Navy was a battleship that revolutionized naval power when she entered service in 1906. Dreadnought represented such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the dreadnoughts, as well as the class of ships named for her, while the generation of ships she made obsolete became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Dreadnought was the first battleship of her era to have a uniform main battery, rather than having a few large guns complemented by a heavy secondary battery of somewhat smaller guns. She was also the first capital ship to be powered by steam turbines, making her the fastest battleship in the world at the time of her completion. The launch of HMS Dreadnought helped spark a major naval arms race as navies around the world rushed to match her. The HMS Dreadnought was the only ship of her class and she was in service for World War I.