How the Formidables combined earlier battleship designs

British pre-dreadnoughts show how much armament and mounting arrangements could change during a design's development. Some classes began with open mounts and ended with turrets. The Formidables are interpreted here as combining the preferred Majestic design with the Canopus class's better machinery and armour. That mixture helps explain how a new class could emerge from earlier designs without every modification becoming a separate class.