In 1891,
Rear Admiral Jackie Fisher, then the
Controller of the Royal Navy, issued a request for a new
battleship design based on the , but that incorporated a recently designed gun and
Harvey armour, which was significantly stronger than
compound armour. The
Director of Naval Construction,
William Henry White, prepared a preliminary design for a ship armed with four of the 12 in guns and protected with an armour belt that was thick. White submitted the design on 27 January 1892 to the
Board. Due to the greater resilience that Harvey armour provided, less of it could be used for the same level of protection, allowing for significant weight reduction. As a result, the protection scheme was made stronger and more comprehensive than in the
Royal Sovereigns, while minimising increased displacement. This included the fitting of fully enclosed armoured gun shields for the main battery guns. The Board approved the design and intended to lay down three ships under the 1892 programme, but work on the 12 in gun was taking longer than predicted, and so construction was delayed to the 1893 programme. By that time, the third ship of what was to be the
Majestic class was redesigned as a second-class battleship, , leaving only two ships to be laid down under the 1893 estimates. By August 1893, however, the public perceived the strength of the
Royal Navy to have fallen relative to its traditional rivals, the French and Russian navies.
John Spencer, the
First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a large naval expansion plan referred to as the Spencer Programme that included seven more
Majestic-class battleships to soothe public opinion. The
Majestics were to be a benchmark for all successor
pre-dreadnoughts. While the preceding
Royal Sovereign-class battleships had revolutionised and stabilised British battleship design by introducing the high-
freeboard battleship with four main-battery guns in twin mountings in
barbettes fore and aft, it was the
Majestics that settled on the 12 in main battery and began the practice of mounting armoured gunhouses over the barbettes; these gunhouses, although very different from the old-style, heavy, circular gun turrets that preceded them, would themselves become known as "turrets" and became the standard on warships worldwide. The
Majestic class, the largest class of battleships ever built, were some of the most successful battleships of their time, and they were widely copied. Indeed, the Japanese and the battleship were based directly on the
Majestics.
General characteristics and machinery The
Majestics were
long between perpendiculars and
long overall. They had a
beam of and a
draught of . They displaced up to at full combat load. The ships had a freeboard of forward,
amidships, and aft. Their hulls were divided into numerous
watertight compartments, with 72 compartments inside the
armoured citadel and 78 outside it. A
double bottom extended for much of the length of the hull. They were fitted with two pole masts, each with two
fighting tops. Except for
Caesar,
Hannibal, and
Illustrious, they had a new design in which the bridge was mounted around the base of the foremast behind the
conning tower to prevent a battle-damaged bridge from collapsing around the tower. The
Majestics were considered good seaboats, in large part due to their high freeboard, with an easy
roll and good steamers, although they suffered from high fuel consumption. They were nevertheless very manoeuvrable. They had a transverse
metacentric height of at full load. The ships had a crew of 672–794 officers and
ratings, and this number varied between ships and over the course of their careers. Each ship carried a variety of smaller boats, usually including three steam
pinnaces, one steam
launch, two
cutters, two
whalers, three
gigs of between , one skiff
dinghy, and one
raft. The ships were equipped with six searchlights, with four on the bridge and one on each mast. All nine ships received Type I
wireless transmitters in 1909–10. During the
sea trials for the preceding battleship , the ship's engineers learned that the engines might fail at high levels of
forced draught; as a result, the
Majestics were designed to reach the same maximum speed with a more powerful engine. This allowed the engineers a wider margin of safety at maximum speed. Their propulsion system consisted of two 3-cylinder
triple expansion engines, each driving a single four-bladed screw. Steam was provided by eight coal-fired, single-ended
Scotch marine boilers, which were trunked into a pair of
funnels placed side by side. Their engines were rated at at normal draught, and they provided a top speed of . At forced draught, they could reach and . By 1908, the ships had been re-boilered with mixed coal- and oil-fired models. The ships carried of coal normally, and additional spaces allowed for up to to be stored. With the installation of the new boilers, oil storage amounting to was added. At a speed of , the ships could steam for . At , their cruising radius fell to .
Armament Majestic and her sisters were armed with four
BL 12-inch Mk VIII 35-
calibre guns in twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft. This calibre would become the standard for all British battleship classes built for the next fifteen years. They were the first new British battleships to mount a 12-inch main battery since the 1880s. The new gun was a significant improvement on the 13.5-inch (343 mm) gun which had been fitted on the
Admiral and
Royal Sovereign classes that preceded the
Majestics, in terms of ballistics and strength of the gun itself, and it was significantly lighter. The 12 in gun had a
muzzle velocity of —a significant increase over the 13.5 in gun owing to the use of
smokeless propellant—and it could fire a shell with a range of . The turrets were placed on pear-shaped barbettes; the first six ships had this arrangement, but the last two,
Caesar and
Illustrious, had circular barbettes. The BII mountings in the first six ships allowed all-around loading from the supply of ready ammunition kept in the turret, but the guns had to return to the centerline to bring ammunition up from the magazines, as the ammunition hoists did not rotate with the turret.
Caesar and
Illustrious, with their circular barbettes, had BIII mountings with rotating hoists, and these allowed all-around loading from the magazines. Both the BII and BIII mounts had a range of elevation from −5 degrees to 13.5 degrees, with the loading angle at maximum elevation. During the
First World War, four of the
Majestics were disarmed, and these guns were used to arm eight s. A further two turrets from
Illustrious were later emplaced as coastal guns on the
Tyne. The saving in weight from the main battery allowed the
Majestic class to carry a
secondary battery of twelve QF (
quick-firing)
6-inch 40-calibre guns, a larger secondary armament than in previous classes. These were mounted in
casemates in two gun decks amidships, and they fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of . Elevated at 15 degrees, they could hit targets out to . The ships also carried sixteen
QF 12-pounder Mk I guns and twelve
QF 2-pounder Mk I guns for defence against
torpedo boats. These were placed in a variety of mounts, including in casemates, on the main battery turret roofs, and in the fighting tops. The ships were also equipped with five 18 in (450 mm)
torpedo tubes, four of which were submerged in the ship's hull, with the last in a deck-mounted launcher in the stern. The
Woolwich Arsenal manufactured the torpedoes, which were the Mark IV model; these carried a
warhead and had a range of at a speed of .
Armour The
armoured belt on the
Majestic class consisted of 9 inches (229 mm) of Harvey steel, which allowed equal protection with less cost in weight compared to previous types of armour. This allowed the ships to have a deeper and lighter belt than previous battleships without any loss in protection. The belt armour extended for along the hull; it covered above the
waterline and below. The belt was connected, via the barbettes, by a thick transverse
bulkhead forward and a 12 in thick bulkhead aft. The ship's armoured deck was thick on the central portion, with thick sloped sides that connected to the bottom edge of the belt armour. This arrangement required any shell that penetrated the belt to also pass through the deck before it could reach the ship's vitals. The deck was reduced to toward the bow and stern. The barbettes for the main battery were protected with 14 in of armour on their exposed sides above the armoured deck, while the portion that was masked below the deck was reduced to . The
gunhouses for the main battery had thick faces, thick sides, rears, and thick roofs. The secondary guns' casemates were 6 in thick, with 2 in thick sides and rears to protect the gun crews from splinters. A
mantlet that was 6 in thick covered the stern torpedo tube. The forward conning tower had 14 in of steel on the sides, except for the rear-facing side, which was reduced to 12 in. The aft conning tower had much thinner armour protection, with 3 in on all sides. == Ships ==