replacing the upper deck casemates of the Majestic, though at a later stage of construction a 9.2 was put in place of each pair of 7.5. Italy and Germany evolved ships with something heavier than the 6-inch as secondary gun, while France reverted to her early ideas and in the Republique produced a ship with all guns high up as the main feature.
When the King Edward was laid down the 6-inch fetish was well under suspicion, and the Lord Nelson type was evolved as a King Edward without any 6-inch and with more 9.2 on the deck above.
The conception of a ship with nothing but 12-inch guns belongs to Colonel Cuniberti, the distinguished Italian naval architect, who in 1903 aroused a certain amount of derision and a good deal of suspicion as to flightiness by his 'Ideal Battleship for the British Navy'—published in 'Fighting Ships' of 1903. This ship was of 17,000 tons, carried twelve 12-inch guns, had a 12-inch belt and 24-knot speed. She was an enlarged Vittor Emanuele. The following year (1904) some Italian officer writing in the 'Bivista Marittima' discussed the idea and suggested that to be fully efficient the ship should abandon the old idea of some guns firing on one side only. The Cuniberti ship bore seven 12-inch of her twelve on the broadside. The Italian officer suggested four turrets in the line of keel—the old Royal Sovereign and Prince Albert idea. He put two guns in each, and—to keep the turrets small—placed one gun on top of another, it being apparently
