The H.M.S. Dreadnought was a battleship that brought about a revolution in naval warfare and tactical thinking, spawning an entire class of battleship named after it and descendants, the superdreadnoughts. There hadn't been a major naval conflict since the Napoleonic wars but naval technology saw considerable improvements. In 1806 the two and three decked ships of the line with muzzle-loading cannons were the mainstays of navies across the globe. The advent of steel armor, breech-loading artillery, and steam power meant ships had gone through radical changes. But because of this gradual evolution of ship design there was one key problem. Battleships had an armament consisting of guns in different sizes. In addition to complicating ammunition supplies, this meant that accurate ranging of the ship's weapons were difficult if not impossible. The splashes from the different caliber guns would be at different ranges so it would be nearly impossible for a gunnery officer on a battleship to determine where his shells had landed. As artillery increased in its accuracy and range, the importance of accurately and reliably aiming broadsides became a matter of life and death.
The solution was the all big-gun battleship, carrying massive broadsides of heavy guns in one caliber. With improvements in fire control a battleship could fire a devastating broadside accurately and repeatedly into an enemy ship. The release of the dreadnought launched a new arms race among the Great Powers. The ship with heavier guns could fire at a longer range, sometimes safely from beyond the range of enemy ships with lighter guns. In addition a certain amount of prestige was attached to having a fleet of large, powerful battleships. As Germany accelerated its building program of battleships, Britain grew increasingly concerned for their own safety and gradually British interests aligned with those of France, rather than where they had traditionally been with Germany.
This is just a very brief overview, of course, and the book goes into a great many other subjects, such as Kaiser Wilhelm II's personality and strange love-hate relationship with Britain which added further problems to existing relationships between the two powers. And Massie goes into a great amount of detail about those problems. I think the biggest thing Massie could have done was reduce the overall scope of his book. The reason I say this is that Massie goes back to Victoria and Albert and their many children, of whom their eldest daughter, Victoria, married Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia, and later Crown Prince of the united German Empire and the tragically short-reigned emperor Friedrich III. Friedrich's own fondness for England and English customs is used to explain Wilhelm II's psyche and his strange relationship with the nation. I think Massie simply went too far back to make his history concise.
Another issue I noticed was that Massie included detailed biographies of every important figure that factored into the historical narrative somehow. While I can understand talking about, for example, Jackie Fisher, the admiral who was responsible for modernizing the British Navy and developing the H.M.S. Dreadnought, I think detailed biographies of other figures could be skipped or at least heavily reduced, such as Philip Eulenberg who was accused of homosexuality in Germany and at the time caused a considerable scandal. Massie fails to place it into the larger context and how it would have an effect on the naval arms race. Every major government official involved, from Bulow to Holstein to Caprivi to Asquith to Roseberry to Grey gets their own biography chapter which bloats the length of the book out far beyond what I think it needed.
Another criticism I have is for a book titled Dreadnought, the ships themselves don't seem to be as large as the diplomatic relations between nations about them. There's a chapter about their development which goes with Jacky Fisher, and there is a chapter about the Naval Scare, but significantly more of the book is spent on people's biographies and diplomatic exchanges rather than the ships. Maybe this will be talked about more in Massie's other book, Castles of Steel, but there's very little commentary on the dreadnoughts. And Massie doesn't even talk about the Battle of Jutland, the only major dreadnought engagement in history, stopping his narrative with the declaration of war in 1914.
Overall this book is very detailed and it shows that Massie has done considerable research into this subject, but this book is far more about the personalities and diplomacy than about the ships themselves. If you're looking for a more military-focused history, then this book is not going to serve you well. But if you're just looking for a ton of nineteenth and early twentieth century history, especially with Britain and Germany, then this is definitely worth your time.
- Kalpar
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