King Edward VII-class battleship

The King Edward VII class was a group of eight pre-dreadnought battleships launched for the Royal Navy between 1903 and 1905: King Edward VII, Commonwealth, Hindustan, Britannia, Dominion, New Zealand, Africa and Hibernia. Designed under William Henry White, they developed the pre-dreadnought type by adding a heavy secondary battery of four 9.2-inch guns to the usual four 12-inch main guns. Each ship was driven by two four-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines turning two screws, with boilers of several makes fitted to compare their merits. The class was built at royal dockyards and private yards, among them the Fairfield yard at Govan, which built HMS Commonwealth. Made obsolescent by HMS Dreadnought in 1906, the ships served in the Grand Fleet's screening role as the so-called Wobbly Eight, and King Edward VII was lost to a mine in January 1916 and Britannia to a U-boat in November 1918.