The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Great Britain Battleship Bellerophon

Laid down on December 3, 1906, launched on July 27, 1907 and commissioned on February 20, 1909, Bellerophon carried a main armament of ten 12 inch main guns mounted two per turret; one centerline forward, one centerline aft, one centerline amidships that could fire to either side and one wing turret per side that could fire only fore and aft and to their own side. Bellerophon was the name ship of a three-ship battleship class that was very similar to the original Dreadnought, although the 12 inch guns were of a greater caliber length and this class introduced an anti-torpedo bulkhead. They were turbine powered using coal-fired boilers. When Dreadnought was completed, Great Britain had made all her earlier "pre-dreadnought" battleships obsolete, so this three-ship class was laid down hard on the heels of that first modern battleship. Of course, Bellerophon was a mythic Greek hero who rode Pegasus, the winged horse. The "Billy Ruffin" name had a glorious tradition in the Royal Navy, particularly with the wooden 74-gun ship of the line built in 1786 which saw more action than any other British battleship in the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, including the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar and was the ship where Napoleon surrendered to Great Britain after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Prewar, the ship collided with the battle cruiser Inflexible in 1911 and, shortly after the outbreak of war; she collided with the cargo ship St. Clair. Spending the entire war with the Grand Fleet, Bellerophon took part in the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916 and suffered no damage. Placed in reserve in 1919, she was sold to the breakers in November 1921.

See other battleships: Hercules, Neptune, Vanguard