How a World War I crew would read a modern warship

Would a World War I crew understand a modern warship in a gunfight?

They could understand its speed, but might misclassify a large fast ship because that performance belonged to destroyers in their experience.

Modern speed would not be incomprehensible to sailors from World War I because destroyers already approached similar figures. Their difficulty would be classification: they would expect that performance from a small destroyer, not a battleship-sized hull. The comparison then moves another half-century back to HMS Warrior. A crew familiar with that earlier stage of naval development would face a much greater conceptual gap.