The proposed fast battleship appealed to the Jellicoe-aligned faction, but Fisher wanted a ship faster than 28 knots and was willing to sacrifice armour to reach more than 30 knots. That difference made the proposed Argincourt an easy programme for Fisher to cancel. In this assessment, the better-protected battleship route was more sensible. The Italian Francesco Caracciolo class and other contemporary studies suggested that rival navies were moving toward fast battleships. Britain had considered greater speed for the Queen Elizabeths but accepted simpler machinery after industry stressed construction speed and ease. Small-tube boilers in the sixth ship could therefore have been an attempt to seize the fast-battleship benchmark before competitors.
Notable Point · 26:07-28:19
Fisher, Jellicoe, and the fast-battleship benchmark
Competing ideas about speed, armour, machinery, and foreign construction explain why Fisher rejected a fast battleship that Jellicoe's allies could have treated as the next standard.