HMS Dreadnought, the ship that literally changed the game

Credit: Wikipedia.

The HMS Dreadnought, lead ship of not only the Dreadnought class, but dreadnoughts themselves. Dreadnoughts were a beast of a ship - larger, heavier and better armed and armored than other ships of the time. In fact, the Dreadnought rendered every battleship of the era obsolete by its mere existence, they became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Launched in 1906, she was probably the most feared ship on the planet, yet never saw serious combat. No joke, the only ship the Dreadnought ever sank was an unfortunate German submarine that it rammed.


The Dreadnought was also involved in an embarrassing scandal for the Royal Navy, known as the Dreadnought Hoax. Basically, a man named Horace de Vere Cole, a well known hoaxer, tricked the Royal Navy into giving a tour of the Dreadnought to a group of supposed "Abyssinian royals". The royals, of course, were not royals and instead were a group of Cole's friends in disguise and wearing blackface.

Credit: Iconic Photos.

The Dreadnought was sold for scrap in 1923 and the dreadnought battleships were eventually supplanted by aircraft carriers.