5630 x 3479 px | 47,7 x 29,5 cm | 18,8 x 11,6 inches | 300dpi
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HMS Collingwood was an ironclad battleship of the Victorian Royal Navy. She was the first example of the Admiral class, all of which except HMS Camperdown were named after famous Naval Commanders. At the time of her design, she was not considered as being the fore-runner of a class; She was designed by Barnaby as a one-off, as an answer to the French Formidable class, which carried three heavy guns on the centre line and a number of smaller pieces on the broadside. He made several proposals to the Board of Admiralty, including an improved Inflexible, an improved Dreadnought and an improved Italia, all of which were rejected. His final submission, which became HMS Collingwood, featured breech-loading artillery mounted on the centre-line in barbettes and set the pattern for every British battleship designed thereafter until HMS Dreadnought. She was built to a requirement that she should not exceed 10, 000 tons displacement. She was also built with sufficient engine power to achieve, with forced draught, a speed of over 16 knots. In order to achieve this speed on the displacement it was found necessary to give her a low freeboard, which meant that when steaming into wind she would bury her bow in the sea and take green water onto her forecastle, negating the extra power of her engines. The mounting of the main armament in barbettes allowed the guns to be deployed at a height above water of 22 feet, some 10 feet higher than in Colossus. This gave them a better overall command, and increased their ability to deliver plunging fire onto the decks of enemy ships. As the two pairs of guns were contained in individual, widely spaced armoured redoubts, there was no possibility of a single incoming shell disabling all of the main armament. Each barbette was an eleven-sided polygon, 60 feet long by 45 feet wide, and roughly pear-shaped. The guns, mounted on a turntable, could only be loaded when pointed fore and aft with an elevation of 13 degrees.
