The Ships of Brawling Battleships Steel: Great Britain Battleship Iron Duke

Laid down on January 12, 1912, launched on October 12, 1912 and commissioned on March 10, 1914, Iron Duke carried a main armament of ten 13.5 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two centerline superfiring forward, two centerline superfiring aft and one centerline amidships that could fire to both sides. Iron Duke was the name ship of a four-ship "super dreadnought" (because of their 13.5 inch guns) battleship class. These ships were the last battleships in the British Navy to have turbines with coal-fired boilers. The Iron Duke name honored the nickname of the Duke of Wellington who had defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, was the second Royal Navy ship to bear that name and she was Admiral John Jellicoe’s (1859–1935) flagship of the Grand Fleet from August 1914 to November 1916. Like most of her kind, she spent World War One with the Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow and participated, as the flagship, at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916. It was said of Admiral Jellicoe at the Battle of Jutland that he could have lost the war in an afternoon, but despite a serious pounding and heavy losses, he did not. The only serious damage taken by a ship of this battleship class was when the Marlborough took a torpedo hit from the German light cruiser Wiesbaden at the Battle of Jutland and remained in action, although she later had to be towed home. From 1919 to 1924 Iron Duke served in the Mediterranean and, for a period, in the Black Sea supporting White Russian troops during the Russian Civil War. She then served in the Atlantic Fleet until 1929. Disarmed in accord with the London Naval Treaty, when her sister ships were scrapped, she was converted to a gunnery training ship and then passed into reserve. Hit by German bombs at Scapa Flow on October 17, 1939, the Iron Duke was beached in shallow water and continued in use as a depot ship during World War Two. She was disposed of to be scrapped in March 1946.

See other battleships: Bellerophon, Centurion, Friedrich der Grosse