In the Black Sea five Russian pre-dreadnoughts saw brief action against the Ottoman battlecruiser Yavuz during the Battle of Cape Sarych in November 1914. This appears to have been the only meaningful engagement of an enemy ship by a British pre-dreadnought. The subsequent battle was decided by the two Invincible-class battlecruisers which had been dispatched after Coronel. Canopus redeemed herself at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, but only when grounded to act as a harbour-defence vessel she fired at extreme range (13,500 yards) on the German cruiser SMS Gneisenau, and while the only hit was from an inert practice shell which had been left loaded from the previous night (the 'live' shells of the salvo broke up on contact with water one inert shell ricocheted into one of Gneisenau's funnels), this certainly deterred Gneisenau from a potentially damaging raid on a British squadron which was still taking on coal.
Intended to stiffen the British cruisers in the area, in fact her slow speed meant that she was left behind at the disastrous Battle of Coronel. Instead the British dispatched a pre-dreadnought of 1896 vintage, HMS Canopus. While two German cruisers menaced British shipping, the Admiralty insisted that no battlecruisers could be spared from the main fleet and sent to the other side of the world to deal with them. This was first illustrated in the skirmishes between British and German navies around South America in 1914. Nevertheless, the pre-dreadnought played a major role in the war. The advances in machinery and armament meant that a pre-dreadnought was not necessarily the equal of even a modern armoured cruiser, and was totally outclassed by a modern dreadnought battleship or battlecruiser. For a start Wikipedia has this on their actual use in WW1 - usage which would reflect the relevant countries naval strategies.ĭuring World War I, a large number of pre-dreadnoughts remained in service.
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