When a surviving representative already tells the story

The comparison with Royal Sovereign-class battleships introduces another preservation criterion: whether a closely comparable example survives elsewhere. Calling nineteenth-century battleships merely pre-dreadnoughts imposes a later category on designers who did not know HMS Dreadnought lay ahead. The label can also flatten differences among ironclads, Harvey-steel ships, and other stages of battleship development. Mikasa already provides a representative survivor, while USS Texas and HMCS Haida support the same practical argument that a museum collection gains most when it preserves a type or story otherwise missing.