HMS Devastation offers a practical way to explain a battleship era with few surviving examples. She was the first mastless battleship, giving her a relatively clear technological story. Contemporary cruiser development would require several ships to represent its complexity, while Devastation could stand for a missing battleship generation on her own. Her career also shows that the late nineteenth-century naval race was wider than an Anglo-German contest alone.
Notable Point · 39:15-40:54
HMS Devastation and the mastless battleship
The first mastless battleship would fill a gap in preserved warships from the era between sail and the later dreadnoughts.