An earlier Dreadnought with 14-inch guns

How would an earlier American South Carolina have changed Dreadnought's development?

Britain might have built a 14-inch, faster Dreadnought earlier, forcing competitors to rethink their own capital ships.

An earlier, less hurried British design process could have produced a 14-inch Dreadnought and perhaps sister ships rather than the final Lord Nelsons. Ordering new turrets through a normal programme would remove the historical incentive to reuse available 12-inch weapons, while Fisher's preferences point toward both heavier guns and roughly 24 knots. A small class of such ships could replace the last British pre-dreadnoughts and give the Royal Navy useful older dreadnoughts for secondary theatres during the First World War. The 14-inch battery would also force Germany and other rivals to pause while they developed credible answers instead of merely copying an all-big-gun layout. This one change in American timing would affect British procurement, the international arms race, and later Mediterranean force structure.