NEW BRITISH BATTLESHIPS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 26 November 1907, Page 4

NEW BRITISH BATTLESHIPS.

In the two new battleships which arc to be laid down for the Hritish navy in acordance with the current year's programme, a departure from the policy adopted in regard to the armament of the Dreadnought is to be effected, While of the same class and type, they will be 2,000 tons heavier, their displacement being about 20,000 tons. In regard to the main armament, there will not be so many weapons of the larger calibre, though they will be much heavier, a new 13.5-inch weapon which has ,bcen severely tested being adopted in the place of the 12-inch. This gun-lires a shell weighing 1,250 pounds as compared with the 850lb. shell of the 12-inch arm. Moreover, a secondary battery of medium quick-firing guns is to be carried, a feature which is entirely absent in the Dreadnought, and which deficiency has been severely criticised. The effect of this modification will be that the new vessels will have an aggregate fire of some 8,500 pounds as compared with 6,800 pounds in the Dreadnought. These two vessels arc to be laid down at once at the Portsmouth and Devonport dockyards respectively, and thev will each cost over two million pounds. At the present time the armament firms in the country are working at full pressure to deliver the present order of 12inch guns for the navv's imediate requirements, n-j less than 120 of these weapons being in course of construction