The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Great Britain Battleship Hercules

Laid down on July 30, 1909, launched on May 10 1910 and commissioned on July 31, 1911, Hercules carried a main armament of ten 12 inch main guns mounted two per turret; one centerline forward, two centerline superfiring aft and one wing turret per side that could fire fore and aft and to both sides. Hercules was part of the two-ship Colossus battleship class. They were powered by turbines with coal-fired boilers. Inspired by the American battleships, this was the first British class to feature superfiring turrets, and the experiment was not completely successful—fire directly to the rear would cause blast damage to the lower turret. Broadside firepower was, however, much improved from eight guns on earlier battleship classes to all ten guns on the Colossus class. Hercules, of course, was the extremely strong and melancholy Greek hero. The Hercules name has a long history as a name in the Royal Navy, including an earlier pre-dreadnought battleship and a later aircraft carrier. Prewar, as seemed to be the case with many of the early battleships whose unprecedented size made them difficult to handle, the ship was involved in a collision with a freighter. She spent the Great War with the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow and participated in the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916. The Allied armistice commission was carried to Kiel, Germany in 1919 aboard the Hercules , which was retired shortly after that trip. She was sold for scrap in 1920.

See other battleships: Neptune, Iron Duke, Vanguard