I was bored so I decided to write this up today, as bEVEsthda had correctly identified the image: HMS Agincourt (know to her crew as "The Gin Palace" as a play on her name and the fact that her interior was rather opulent for a warship), owner of, if not the most effective, arguably the most visually impressive broadside in battleship history, with no less than 14 12" guns, the most ever mounted a dreadnought - the effect of her firing was likened to a battlecruiser exploding. But to get onto why she's interesting beyond simply the number of guns, we'll go back a few years before her construction, to 1907.
After HMS Dreadnought had fundamentally altered battleship design, the other naval powers needed to get on the dreadnought bandwagon (albeit often with ideas that had been floated around before said ship). The Americans were the first to follow, with the South Carolina class, which featured a superfiring centreline main battery - allowing for a the same 8 gun broadside as the Dreadnought, while saving the cost and weight of the extra wing turret and giving greater firepower to bow and stern - but lacking the turbine driven speed of the British ship. The third nation to begin construction of a dreadnought battleship however was a little different. It's wasn't the usual suspects: Japan or Germany (though Nassau's quick construction meant they were the third to have one in service), or even nations like Italy or France. No, the third nation to place an order for a dreadnought was that famous naval powerhouse, Brazil.
This was considered pretty mad at the time too, and there were many who thought that Brazil was acting as a proxy for another nation - likely Germany or Japan - who would buy the ships when finished, but in fact the order for three ships placed with Armstong in March 1907 was a genuine purchase from the Brazilian government, with the aim of ensuring naval domination over their South American neighbors Argentina and Chile, both of whom had been involved in a naval arms Race with Brazil in the preceding years.
And the Brazilians didn't skimp on these ships. The first two (the third was to be delivered later) were to be the most powerful warships in the world, eclipsing both the Dreadnought and the South Carolina and incorporating many untested features. In particular, the ship carried 12 12" guns, which, with the wing turret layout gave her a 10 gun broadside, the heaviest in the world at the time.
The two ships, Minas Geraes and Sao Paulo entered service with the Brazillian Navy in 1910, and had sparked a re-ignition of the South American naval race, with both Argentina and Chile placing orders for dreadnoughts of their own. Their service history was relatively unremarkable, with only a major mutiny over the conditions of sailors a few months into their career standing out. They were offered to the aid the British during WW1, but were poorly maintained and somewhat obsolete even though they were less than a decade old, so the offer was turned down. The Sao Paulo did fire her guns in anger during a rebellion in the early twenties. Eventually, despite some modernisation they were retired from service after the Second World War though the Sao Paulo did get one last hurrah when, while being towed to a British shipbreaker, she broke free in a storm and disappeared.
But I mentioned the original order was for three ships, so what of the third one? Well, it didn't take long for them to realised that, with the state of their economy, the Brazilians couldn't really afford another warship of that size, and they attempted to negotiate their way out of the contract with Armstrong, but failed, and work began on the Rio de Janeiro in 1910. As battleship technology had advanced significantly even in the three years since work on the previous two ships had begun, she was to be of a new design. In order to keep costs down, a proposed design weighing in at almost 40000 tons and armed with 14" guns was scaled down to a smaller ship with 12" guns, though, likely as much as a political statement to impress the people than anything else (well, she had to have more guns than her predecessors, right?), she was to have no less than 14 of those guns, albeit at the cost of armour. The Rio de Janiero was launched in January 1913.
However, keeping even this scaled down design was beyond the resources of the Brazilian economy, and short on cash, in late 1913, they sold her to the Ottoman Empire, who rechristened her Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel. Importantly, much of the money raised to purchase her came from private donations from Turkish citizens. By August 1914, her trials were complete, and the Ottoman crew had arrived in England to collect the Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel. Unfortunately for them, something else happened in that month which changed everything: WW1 broke out. The alignment of the Ottomans was uncertain, and the British, not willing to risk handing dreadnoughts over to potentially hostile powers, seized both this ship and another battleship destined for the Ottomans, Resadiye. This caused a huge outcry in Turkey, in no small part due to the feeling that the ship belonged to the people due to their investment, and combined with the Germans gifting the Ottomans a warship at the same time, was a major factor in driving the Empire into the camp of the Central Powers.
Now in the Royal Navy, the Rio de Janiero/Sultân Osmân-ı Evvel was given a third name, HMS Agincourt (the name was intended for the 6th member of the Queen Elizabeth class, but she had been cancelled upon the outbreak of war) and after some refitting and a shakedown, entered active service in September 1914. The Agincourt was a pleasant ship to serve on, as the Brazilian designers had placed crew comfort over many other considerations, with a fancy interior and large rooms (though many instructions for the ship's operation were in Portuguese), hence the nickname she acquired. The ship was perfectly capable of handling the huge broadside (although it did tend to cause much of the ships tableware and glasses to break), something many people feared could cause structural damage, and her engines actually overperformed, exceeding their design rating.
The Agincourt saw action at the Battle of Jutland, but failed to achieve any recorded hits, and despite an attempt to sell her back to Brazil, was scrapped in the early twenties. The Brazilians did try again to get a third dreadnought after selling the Rio de Janiero, but despite some preliminary work, WW1 brought and en to the plans, and their naval ambitions.
Hmm...that was probably more than I intended to write, but hey, I find these thing interesting to talk about
Retour en haut
), and bonus points for her nickname:
