Built in just fourteen months to a revolutuionary design by W.H. Gard and launched at Portsmouth in 1906, Dreadnought, displacing 17,900tons, cut an impressive figure. With her 10-12in. guns (each weighing 500 tons) a free board of 28 feet, length of 527 feet and beam of 82 feet, her eight steam turbines powered by eighteen Babcock and Wilson boilers enabled Dreadnought to cruise at 17.5 knots, with a maximum speed of 21 knots. Dubbed by Admiral Fisher as The hard boiled egg who could not be beat, H.M.S. Dreadnought justly enjoyed her reputation as the most powerful ship in the world. Her combination of speed and strength made all other warships obsolete overnight, triggering an arms race between Britain and Germany that would decide the outcome of the First World War. Dreadnought herself was obsolete by the war and, apart from the ramming and sinking of U29 in 1915, played little further part. She was decommissioned in 1920 and broken up in 1921.