Small-tube boilers and Britain's industrial base

Small-tube boilers were viable, but only a limited set of firms could manufacture them confidently. Jellicoe pressed for their adoption, yet the argument that they were not ready largely reflected the fact that high-quality supply effectively meant going to Yarrow. Standardizing the class on those boilers and one turbine supplier would have sidelined yards accustomed to building their own machinery and risked weakening the wider naval industrial base. Machinery selection involved metallurgy, supplier capacity, yard politics, long-term support, and performance. A longer ten-gun design might paradoxically have made advanced boilers more acceptable, because retaining a familiar main-battery layout would have reduced the number of simultaneous innovations.