HMS King Edward VII, named after King Edward VII, was the lead ship of her class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the British Royal Navy. Armed with a battery of four and four guns, she and her sister ships marked a significant advance in offensive power compared to earlier British battleship designs that did not carry the 9.2 in guns. King Edward VII was built at the Devonport Dockyard, and was laid down in March 1902, launched in July 1903, and completed in February 1905.
The ship entered service with the Atlantic Fleet as the fleet flagship before being transferred to the Channel Fleet in 1907, where she also served as the flagship. The Channel Fleet became the Home Fleet in 1909, where she remained for the next several years. During this period, the fleet was repeatedly reorganized, with King Edward VII ultimately ending up in the 3rd Battle Squadron by 1912, along with her sisters. The ships were sent to the Mediterranean during the First Balkan War to enforce the transfer of Scutari to Albania. Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the 3rd Battle Squadron became part of the Grand Fleet, where King Edward VII served for the next two years. The Grand Fleet conducted numerous sweeps into the North Sea in the hope of catching German vessels at sea, but rarely found action.
On the morning of 6 January 1916, while steaming to Belfast for a refit, King Edward VII struck a naval mine that had been laid by the German auxiliary cruiser . Attempts to tow King Edward VII to port failed when she took on a dangerous list, so she was abandoned and her crew evacuated to several destroyers. King Edward VII sank later that day.
Design
Following the development of pre-dreadnought type battleships carrying heavy secondary guns of diameter in the Italian Regia Marina and the United States Navy, the Royal Navy decided to build similar ships. Initial proposals called for a battleship equipped with eight guns to support the main battery, though under the direction of William Henry White, the Director of Naval Construction, these were replaced with four guns. The new ships, though based on the general type that had formed the basis of the preceding four battleship designs, marked the first significant change in the series. Like all late pre-dreadnoughts that entered service in the mid-1900s, King Edward VII was made almost instantaneously obsolescent by the commissioning of the all-big-gun in December 1906, armed with a battery of ten heavy guns compared to the typical four of most pre-dreadnoughts.
King Edward VII was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . The King Edward VII-class battleships displaced normally and up to fully loaded. Her crew numbered 777 officers and ratings. The King Edward VII-class ships were powered by a pair of 4-cylinder triple-expansion engines that drove two screws, with steam provided by sixteen water-tube boilers. The boilers were trunked into two funnels located amidships. The King Edward VII-class ships had a top speed of from .
King Edward VII had a main battery of four 40-calibre guns mounted in twin-gun turrets fore and aft. These were supported by a heavy secondary battery of four guns in four single turrets, two on each broadside. The ships also mounted ten 45-calibre guns mounted in casemates, in addition to fourteen 12-pounder guns and fourteen 3-pounder guns for defence against torpedo boats. As was customary for battleships of the period, she was also equipped with five torpedo tubes submerged in the hull; two were on each broadside, with the fifth in the stern.
King Edward VII had an armoured belt that was thick; the transverse bulkheads on the aft end of the belt was thick. The sides of her main battery turrets were also 8 to 12 in thick, atop 12 in barbettes, and the 9.2 turrets had sides. The casemate battery was protected with of armour plate. Her conning tower had 12-inch-thick sides. She was fitted with two armoured decks, thick, respectively.