British design responded to American, Japanese, Italian, and other fleets as well as Germany, so Heligoland cannot determine one inevitable ship lineage. If German gun calibres rise during the 1890s, the Lord Nelson class might already receive 14-inch weapons and HMS Dreadnought could begin from the same larger calibre. The illustrative sequence then puts the Orions near 16 inches and the Queen Elizabeths near 18 inches. Every step is speculative because a regional operational problem could influence a wider multi-power design competition without dictating its exact result.
Notable Point · 1:55:04-1:56:29
A multi-power gun-calibre race
British capital-ship design would still answer several foreign navies, but an earlier German calibre race could raise the starting point for Dreadnought-era guns.