For guns it had eight of the same large weapons, and it was armoured with 7-inch steel armour-plates instead of 11-inch.
Thus we see illustrated what has just been said, less guns and thinner armour, to allow for more engine power and higher speed. Or, to put it the other way, we observe how higher speed was attained at the expense of the guns and the armour.
But just as the Dreadnought was followed by other still greater improvements in the same direction we get, in 1910, the famous ship Lion, a vessel not unknown to the Germans, a "super-Invincible."
This ship has a tonnage of over 26,000 and 70,000 horse-power. It was designed to do 28 knots.
We saw the use of these ships in the Jutland battle, when, using their high speed, they attacked the German battleships and kept them engaged while the slower battleships came up. Though they suffered severe losses, which probably the more heavily armoured battleships would have escaped, they held the Germans so that it was only the failing light which saved them from utter destruction.
Another example was the way in which they hunted down Von Spee and his squadron off the Falklands, when they caught the Germans because of their higher speed and then sank them by means of their heavier guns with practically no loss to themselves.
We saw them again in the Heligoland battle, coming up to the assistance of the lighter vessels just in the nick of time and scattering the enemy like so much chaff.
A fact little known to most people and productive of much surprise is that these battleships and cruisers are not such very large vessels, when compared with those of the merchant service. The Lion is 660 feet long and 86 feet wide, the Aquitania is 930 feet long and 98 feet wide, and the Olympic is 882 feet long and 92 feet wide.
The mighty Orion makes a poorer showing still in