In spite of their obsolescence, the pre-dreadnought battleships played an important secondary role in World War I and two even briefly served as combat vessels in the German Navy early in World War II.

The existing pre-dreadnoughts were decisively outclassed, and new and more powerful battleships were from then on known as dreadnoughts while the ships laid down previously were designated pre-dreadnoughts. Her innovative steam turbine engines also made her faster. Dreadnought followed the trend in battleship design to heavier, longer-ranged guns by adopting an 'all-big-gun' armament scheme of ten 12 inch guns. These battleships were abruptly made obsolete by the arrival of HMS Dreadnought in 1906. The decisive clash of pre-dreadnought fleets was between the Russians and Japanese during the Battle of Tsushima on. New naval powers such as Germany, Japan, and the United States began to establish themselves with fleets of pre-dreadnoughts, while the navies of Britain, France, and Russia expanded to meet these new threats. The similarity in appearance of battleships in the 1890s was underlined by the increasing number of ships being built. In contrast to the chaotic development of ironclad warships in preceding decades, the 1890s saw navies worldwide start to build battleships to a common design as dozens of ships essentially followed the design of the British Majestic class. They were powered by coal-fuelled triple-expansion steam engines. Built from steel, and protected by hardened steel armour, pre-dreadnought battleships carried a main battery of very heavy guns in barbettes (open or with armored gunhouses) supported by one or more secondary batteries of lighter weapons.

Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Pre-dreadnought battleship is the general term for all of the types of sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late-1880s and 1905. HMS Ocean was typical of pre-dreadnought battleships. The USS Texas, built in 1892, was the first battleship of the United States Navy.

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