Captain Cowper Coles pressed for HMS Captain despite the objections of Edward Reed and Third Sea Lord Robert Spencer Robinson. First Lord Childers lost his son when Captain sank and blamed officials who had argued against the design. Monarch combined similar turret ideas with the seakeeping provisions that Reed and Robinson considered necessary. Robinson also helped develop a procurement case that treated potential enemies as serious enough to require a viable fleet without presenting them as unbeatable. In this interpretation, his dockyard and procurement reforms created capacity later used in the dreadnought arms race.
Chapter · 3:46-6:29
HMS Captain, political pressure, and dockyard reform
Monarch emerged from the same turret-ship controversy as HMS Captain, while Robert Spencer Robinson's dockyard reforms prepared the Royal Navy for later expansion.