Charge-7 asked us to list the greatest surface ships of all time.
How can a consideration of greatest surface ships of all-time be considered complete without including the H.M.S. Dreadnaught - the model after which all the other battleships were made.
HMS Dreadnought, an 18,110-ton battleship built at Portsmouth Dockyard, England, represented one of the most notable design transformations of the armored warship era. Her "all-big-gun" main battery of ten twelve-inch guns, steam turbine powerplant and 21-knot maximum speed so thoroughly eclipsed earlier types that subsequent battleships were commonly known as "dreadnoughts", and the previous ones disparaged as "pre-dreadnoughts".
(courtesy of
www.history.navy.mil)
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BTW - Charge-7, regarding your concern that someone might want to include submarines: In or out of the submariner community, submarines have always been considered "boats". Or as one old mariner told me a long time ago - a "boat" is anything that can be hoisted aboard a "ship"
Wonder what he would have thought of the U.S.S. Cole's voyage home from Yemen.
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Since we're giving credit where credit is due on the Bismarck question, let's credit the lucky aircrew of the H.M.S. Ark Royal, whose 1920's era Swordfish biplanes actually struck the crippling torpedo blow on the Bismarck, proving (at least somewhat) the value of the aircraft carrier over the battleship in the Atlantic theater.
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Regarding the US Dreadnaught class battleships - the USS Tennessee (which was trapped but hardly damaged at Pearl Harbor) and USS West Virginia (whose Captain ordered her flooded deliberately to prevent her capsizing from multiple torpedo strikes - she sat just outside the Tennessee on battleship row) - were among many survivors of Pearl Harbor who went on to distinguished service in the Pacific Theater.
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On the more obscure front - the SS Patrick Henry, first of 2,751 Liberty ships launched on Sept. 27, 1941. She was 441 feet long and 56 feet wide. Her 5 holds could carry over 9,000 tons of cargo, plus airplanes, tanks, and locomotives lashed to its deck. A Liberty could carry 2,840 jeeps, 440 tanks, or 230 million rounds of rifle ammunition. - These were the backbone of the US Maritime logistics chain to Europe, and without them, it is quite possible the US would not have made such a large contribution in WWII.