The Battleship with Too Many Guns - HMS Agincourt
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
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How many heavy gun turrets should a battleship have? A question that kept naval designers up at night for decades. At the start of the 20th century the answer was generally two. Then with the coming of the dreadnoughts ships had three, four, five, even in a few cases six turrets. But only once, in the history of battleship design did a ship appear with seven main turrets, creating a broadside of such explosive power that there were serious concerns that when all the guns fired together the ship would break in half. This is the remarkable story of the slightly absurd HMS Agincourt.
Sources:
R.A Burt, British Battleships of World War 1
Robert Massie, Castles of Steel
Richard Hough, The Great Dreadnought: The Strange Story of the Mightiest Battleship of World War I
Credits:
Artwork by:
/ chrisbyflanker
Animation by CKD Productions, Scuffed_Lund and Josh Bassett
Written, Directed and Produced by:
/ addaway23
Posters can be found here- please check them out they are really good!! www.historigraph.media/store
Hi everyone - Just a quick note here to say that there are couple of little errors in this video that have survived to publication because this video went live early by accident (at midnight UK time). It was uploaded as a draft for final checks, and I must have clicked the wrong button on the visibility options. Apologies!
It's nothing major that I think effects the video as a whole- just a couple of typos of misspeaks in the narration; HMS Erin was the converted Turkish battleship, not HMS Canada, and 12 inches is of course 305mm, not 380.
I'm sure Jacky Fisher would have salivated in ecstasy at the thought of an Agincourt with 14x 380mm guns
Just how many guns and turrets should a battleship have?
Tillman : "YES!"
"It's not how BIG your gun is, it's how you use it."
The crew's training or lack of training makes all the difference in the world to how a ship performs in combat. Two American Navy examples at both extremes are The Battle at Samar in WW2 and battle against the Spanish fleet in Manila bay. That last one had to be a record for worst marksmanship.
12inch is 380mm ?
@@Alex-pj8nz - 380 mm is well beyond 12 inches; closer to 15 inches
Whoever named the turrets after each day of the week has a great sense of humour!
Pretty cool being the only battleship with that naming convention
It was I
It was probably confusing to hear the Captain say "Fire Monday and Tuesday!" while on a Wednesday. They would probably be like "Are you sure you want to wait that long Sir? The enemy is right there! Today!".
Precedent set - at one point in her life at least - by the American schooner Thomas W. Lawson. Unaware of any other maritime usage.
FOIA CHEWSDAY INNIT
And after Jutland, once Agincourt returned to port, it had to have over 250,000 rivets replaced that had popped during the battle due to the guns firing. The officers ward room, briefly mentioned but not detailed, was the largest on any battleship ever built. The Brazilians had asked for it to be mahogany lined and large, so the British built it with a bulkhead missing in order to be able to sit the entire officer complement at dinner. There was some risk (ie. non-trivial, but still recognised) that a 14+ inch main caliber hit at that location would cause the ship to break in half due to the weakness the lack of bulkhead entailed. When the Turks took over the contract every name & label plate on equipment throughout the ship had to be switched out from Portuguese to Turkish. When this was done the builders were told to put English on the back of every plate. Thus, when the British took over the ship the plates simply had to be turned over & reattached, rather than re-made.
great lesson for any manufacturer (outside of an active war at least) today
The video narration at 7.05 says the only damage was broken crockery.
Why would one "missing" bulkhead in the officers quarters have any real impact on the structural stability of the ship? I'd assume the area was in the superstructure or upper part of the ship, not deep in the ship near the keel.
@@stuartburton1167 And it's mistaken. Read the ship's history. Most of the fleet needed repairs for the same thing to one degree or another. Agincourt stands out for the sheer number of rivets she popped as a result of the battle
@@josephdedrick9337 Without the bulkhead running across the ship you've got a single frame trying to do it's job completely unsupported in one plane. A large enough hit at that point will likely cause the frame to fail completely. At minimum, if the frame holds, the lack of bulkhead is going to allow the frame to twist, in that case the ship is screwed and only good for scrap.
At one point Brazil wanted to buy a ship with 12 guns with a caliber of 14in. But British government didn't allow such guns be sold abroad unless to their closest allies. So the representative of shipyard offered Brazil an alternative plan: 14 12in guns and that became HMS Agincourt.
12 guns is still a lot unless 3-4 gun turrets I say.
@@magnemoe1in this era(ww1), triples weren't common to my knowledge and quads weren't in use yet. Duals were the most common.
I mean it makes sense for Brazil, it's not like it'll be facing the latest and greatest of a rival empire, it only has to be able to counter the Chilean and Argintinian dreadnoughts plus in a real war scenario the ship would probably end up spending a lot of time on shore bombardment and there volume of fire is more important than caliber.
2:00 Just a small correction, 12 inches are 305mm not 380mm (380mm are 15 inches)
When I saw that I thought "surely they didn´t put Bismarck calibre guns on a pre-World War I BB" xD
@NekoMikoBismarck I mean, the Queen Elizabeth class had 380 mm guns, and they were technically pre-ww1 battleships
@ You are absolutely correct, I did forget that class. I should have mentioned having almost twice the amount of those guns was definitely a factor in my initial confusion.
@NekoMikoBismarck That's fine, have a good evening, man!
@ Thanks, you too.
Naming the turrets for days of the week is genius
take a message from friday to monday that drinks are to be served from 1700hrs saturday.
""Gunnery officer, The Captain would like you to begin inviting those Huns over there to tea each day of the week. Please do be sure to send the invites at least twice, wouldn't want them to miss one!"
Wonder what the work ethic was like in the Sunday turret.
There's a mistake at 3:37. HMS Canada was the name the British gave to the Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre, which was bought instead of requisitioned, since Chile had had a friendly relationship with Britain for almost 100 years and it also had the world monopoly of salpter, a mineral needed to produce explosives. It was sold back to Chile after the war.
There was supposed to be a sister ship of the Almirante Latorre but WW1 broke out and half of the ship was uncompleted so the British finished it as an aircraft carrier HMS Eagle. They offered it back to Chile after the war to rebuild it back as a battleship but the Chileans declined.
The second Otoman ship became HMS Erin
@@higgy1837 Yep, Turkish name: Reshadie or Reşadiye.
she would have made a great coastal battery / coastal bombardment ship would have been useful if she’d been laid up and later used for North African landings, D-Day, Sicily Salerno etc
To this day the Latorre's bell is rung everyday at colours at the Chilean naval academy.
Growing up in Portsmouth, I knew an elderly gentleman who had been the major of marines on HMS Agincourt. He lent me a book about her.
I particularly remember words from the chapter on Jutland. "...the wicked glow of hits on the target."
His words, "A bad ship in which to be torpedoed."
Oh woww, did he have any story to tell? I would love to hear
3:40 I thought HMS Canada was originally the Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre. The Turkish battleship that was seized was the Resad V, which was renamed in British service to HMS Erin.
You are correct, HMS Canada is formerly Chilean, HMS Erin is the seized Ottoman ship
It's listed as HMS Erin in the closed captions.
yeah I caught that too. And the other Chilean ship became Eagle I believe
Isn't this theft? Did they repay the Ottomans or was it the shipyard that used their own money to build the ship first?
@@user-fc7zo4mg6e Agincourt (Rio de Janeiro) was Brazilian, but they ran out of money. The Ottomans picked up the remaining balance owed but because they sided with the Central Powers against the Entente (Britain, France, Italy, Russia) the Agincourt (Sultan Osman) was claimed by Britain as it was an "enemy vessel" within their borders.
Since the Central Powers lost along with the Ottoman Empire falling apart, Britain offered it back to Brazil as it was originally theirs but it was outdated by 1919 and more of a White Elephant that would've been crippling to the Brazilian Navy rather than helping. Thus, the Brazilians were compensated for the amount they paid into Agincourt as part of the reparations and the ship was sold to the breakers.
Worth remembering that Agincourt was designed for other navies (first Brazilian, then Ottoman) who had different requirements in a battleship from the RN. They did not need nearly as much range (intended only for the River Plate in the first instance and the Black Sea in the second) which allowed great weight of broadside. See the seven turrets in that light.
Still a mistery for me, as a Buenos Aires born and raised argentine, why brits never got to amend such a miss in translation from Plata to Plate. Indeed we got a football club with that name (River Plate) but... why? Something similar happened to the Riachuelo river, that used to be refered as "River Chuelo"... but that was a minor miss. Thank god historians dont talk about the "River Plate Viceroyalty" (I hope so!.)
Here before Agicnourt was changed
Lol! Can't unsee it
Still hasn't been changed
Agicnourt gang
Real
I thought that was wrong
The Gin Palace nickname came from a combination of the lavish fitments and the name - A Gin Court
What timing on this video. I just lost my sweet Guinea pig Agincourt. She was named after this ship specifically. She was a great pig and lived to the ripe old age of 8 1/2. The rest of the piggy fleet miss her, Lexington, Repulse, Dreadnought and Olympia.
I’m so sorry, man.
That was the cutest battle line ever
Those are top class names for guinea pigs. Next one should be Indefatigable
I have 2 Guiney piggy, Bismarck and Deutsch..
Aginscourt lived to a very ripe old age, but know it’s heartbreaking when they called over the rainbow bridge..
Heaven is where we meet our much loved and missed pets…🧐🇮🇪😢
Rest in peace
You steal a ship from a not yet confirmed enemy, then name it after your closest ally’s greatest defeat at your own hands. Top job.
Agincourt saved the 5th Battle Squadron at Jutland. At the end of the run to the north, 5BS was being pounded by the entire HSF, when 1BS finally caught up. An observer on Malaya observed: "One thing I can express is the pleasure it was to see the Agincourt suddenly appear in sight ahead, looking more like a Brock's Benefit* than a battleship, as she poured out salvoes from her broadside of fourteen 12-inch guns..."
*"A spectacular display of pyrotechnics, from the name of the public fireworks display held annually at the Crystal Palace, London, from 1865 to 1936, from C. T. Brock, firework manufacturer."
Watching this video, I’m sitting beneath a historiograph Falklands war poster. It’s good quality and arrived very quickly.
On of my favourite things about warships from 1850-1914 was how many times people just went ‘what if we tried this thing just to see what it happened’ and gave us a whole slew of absolutely adorable monstrosities disguised as warships.
Well said.
As a side note, the reason why Brazil wanted to go to three ships is because their ships were made at the start of the dreadnought race and were similar to Dreadnought herself. Meaning by 1910 they were almost completely obsolete, batting 12in guns in the wing turret design when 13.5 and 14in ships were hitting the construction yard.
That is half right.
When the Brazilians were considering purchasing the 3rd dreadnought they were offered the option for a 14 or 15 inch gun calibre. But Chile and Argentina both had warships with 12 or 14 inches on order already and the 15 inch guns were very experimental at the time of ordering so the Royal Navy could not guarantee delivery.
The Brazilians opted for the 7 turrets of 12 inch calibre instead to get a cheaper warship but massive in scale. The idea being that the smaller calibre but greater number of guns could outmatch the enemy 12 inch armed ships and the size and speed could outrun the enemy 14 inch.
Agincourt was not designed to the typical dreadnought design as late era dreadnoughts had removed all wing mounted turrets from the design as engine layout had improved to the point that all central guns was possible.
On that note Agincourt despite being this huge was actually very fast for a ship of the time and was routinely outpacing other dreadnoughts and even some battlecruisers. At Jutland Agincourt had to be restricted to 3/4 speed in order to not sail away from the formation on her own.
It was auspicious for the Brazilian people that we didn't have three dreadnoughts in the end...
As, Historically, the most common employment of the Brazilian navy is to shell our own cities
@@amandarhodes4072 I was referring to the first two as they ordered when only britain and america had dreadnoughts in the water.
@@amandarhodes4072given the 7 main gun turrets this makes sense that they'd require a longer then typical hull and therfore a higher hull speed.
Madness, there’s no such thing as too much Dakka
DIS! IS! GORKA-MORKA!
While I agree, the Austrians were building ships with triple 12" turrets at Agincourt's time.
5 triple 12"-ers gives you even more Dakka!!
It's a myth that battleships fired all their guns in broadside simultaneously. It was standard practice to fire them in a ripple effect with a tiny pause between each turret. This made spotting fall of shot easier for each turret and avoided putting strain on the ships hull for exactly the reason your described for Agincourt. However all battleships were vulnerable to damaging themselves if they fired everything all at once. Usually it was ships radars or directors that were knocked out of line from vibrations but everything was vulnerable to some degree.
I would LOVE more weird ship videos. No matter the era too, talk ships of the line to us historiograph!
Brilliant to see the new posters on the store :)
Thank you for putting them up.
Certainly would enjoy more oddball design videos like this.
you can NEVER have to many guns, but you CAN have too small of boat
And there is never enough dakka.
I’ve played the old Jutland game lots of times. The Agincourt was a beast and its damage levels were very high. After watching this short I’ll have to say it was given properties it did not possess.
This ship is in the online game i play called World of Warships. Agincourt is a lot of fun to play in the game as she has a lot of secondary guns also. Her only downside in the game is she has zero anti-aircraft guns so the experienced CV players try to track you down. Your only hope is to sail with other ships on your team that do have AA. Its kind of silly, because in real life i am sure the crew would have fired their smaller secondary guns at any planes of the time. We always joke in game we send our crew on deck with their pistols and the cooks throw potatoes at the planes, its our only defense lol. Great historical video i will share it with my team in the game!!
I play the same game with this ship. As far as I'm concerned it's probably one of the strongest battleships in its Tier.
I enjoyed this video about it also.
And your third sentence is why I immediately sold it
The Imperial Russian Navy (Baltic Maximum Battleship 1914), Regia Marina (Ferrati's Battleship "G") and Marine National (Lyon) did draw up plans for 16 gun battleships in 4 quad turrets. But no design beats Tillman IV with a whopping 24 x 16" guns.
🇺🇸🦅
I like your format. You get to the point and keep to it all the way through the story.
It's called A-gin-court on account of that's what the designers had putting all those guns on there. (And historigraph, writing the title)
holy, crap! Totally missed that! LOL
I don't get it.
@@jason200912 the joke is they were drunk on gin when designing the ship
Not because of the Battle of Agincourt that had an absurd amount of archers?
You offered more odd and unusual ships?
Offer accepted!!
2:04 12inch guns are 305mm not 380, thats nearly 15 inches
Little known fact is that Brazil wanted to arm Rio de Janeiro with single barrel 381’s
So embarrassing how rushed this channel's scripts have become
Right you are, Captain; thank you for pointing that out!
Wow 3 videos with in the span of a month that’s new and awesome keep up the great work love your videos
Would be cool to see merchant raiders talked about and their designs
definitely, the ww2 german ships were funny ships that actually outpaced all other german surface ships in terms of raw damage dealt; and were actually more efficient than uboats (did a better kill/cost ratio) while the uboats did more overall.
Just a friendly note : Drachinifel has a couple of videos covering "merchant raiders".
😊
So how many guns you want on this ship?
Agincourt: yesssss!
Since the Greco Turkish naval arms race was mentioned, will you guys cover the naval battles of the Balken wars?
The decision to sell the Rio De Janeiro didn't come due to economical difficulties as they were already paid for. What caused it was actually the improvement in diplomatic relations between the southern american nations, that meant that there was no use for the ship, as the 3 largest navies had the same amount of battleships. Selling the ship would mean not only that Brazil was compromised to the diplomatic relations with Argentina and Chile but also that the return of the investment made could be used to buy another battleship later on, if the need ever came up again, and it shows as, after getting involved in WWI, the brazillian navy started looking at more battleship designs, the most promising boasting 10 15in guns, but the end of the war brought these discussions to a halt. After that however, diplomatic relations between South America became stronger and stronger, which explains why these nations have in general, such low military spendings.
Untill China invades the Continent
Yeah I watched Drach’s video on the South American Dreadnought arms race and was thinking “Wait Brazil sold it because the country wasn’t going to war with its neighbors anymore.”
Extremely fascinating, I didnt know about this monster till now, thank you.
Well done. Thank you so much for this well-researched bit of naval history.
I don't know. It didn't break itself in half, so maybe 7 wasn't so bad. They just needed to keep making the turrets bigger until it did. And remember to film it for posterity.
Just ordered both posters, I was hoping they would be available again 😁😁😁
A menace in wow. Agicnourt lol
This vessel is absolutely meme worthy. Impractical? Maybe. Comical yet intimidating? Yes.
Impractical for the time maybe. Montana was going to carry 12 16''s in 4 triples. While it might be the same number of guns, it's still *a lot*
Title to fix : Agincourt
as an American my advice to my british friends on "too many guns" is that there is no such thing!
Haven't seen our pom poms I guess😅
But, what if they were bigger?
I'm just now realizing how spoiled Mechwarrior has made me. 7 cannons is too many? How quaint.
Why not use 1 big long range cannon
@@jason200912 UAC-5's go daakakakaakakaakaaka!
7 turrets, 14 guns
7 twin turrets
You ever heard of the Swedish Vasa ship?
That one took the first price in too many cannons.
Flipped (literally keel first) to the bottom of the Stockholm archipelago and was found by coincident a few hundred years later.
Now sitting in a museum in Stockholm, bringing in more money from tourists than it cost to build. (That last one is a rumor.)
Agincourt, what a great name for something like this
Keep up the outstanding work.
This was a ship I had never heard anything about at all!!! Thank you for the information I really enjoyed the video
Nice Video. However note that the second Ottoman battleship taken over by the RN was HMS Erin. HMS Canada was the Chilean ship building across HMS Agincourt.
Great video again! Love the more obscure stuff!
4:31 Check your math. Agincourt had 1/4, not 1/3, less armour than Iron Duke. 9” is 3/4 of 12”. You might have been thinking that Iron Duke had 1/3 more armour than Agincourt.
True. Maths was never my strong suit
@@historigraphI hate meth
As a history grad, always brought a thermos to class...
On said thermos was written, "and yet another day goes by that I have not used algebra"
At 2:09 theirs a mistake 12inch guns are 305mm not 380mm as 380-381mm is 15inches.
1:25, if you want to learn more about the South American Naval Arms Race at the beginning of the 20th century, Drachinifel has a film on the subject. Look up South American Dreadnought Race.
It was also Drachinfel who referred to Agincourt in his "Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet" post as having a "turret farm".
Ever do a video on the never completed USS Montana class? Four triple gunned 16 inch turrets?
This is the best thing I ever saw.
Given the choice, I would much rather have been a sailor on HMS Agincourt at Jutland than on HMS Invincible, given the choice.Given much gunnery training, a warship like Agincourt could have been an awesome opponent at Jutland. The threat of torpedoes was on both opponents mind, the importance of Destroyers and Torpedo Boats to protect the heavy units was realized before Jutland, so the heavy units were somewhat protected. The Agincourt was built with its foundation being on "firepower", with armor taking a back seat. I wish there was video available of a Agincourt complete broadside, man, that would be an awesome spectacle.
Thank you. Always great content.
Judging by the Iowa class, three main turrets with three cannon each is perfection.
Yamato agrees.
For the time yes. But keep in mind that that mostly applies if the guns are capable of independent elevation.
So far as I recall, Agincourt didn't score any hits during the Battle of Jutland, and if I'm wrong on that, I can point to the fact that British AP shells weren't terribly reliable, having a habit of detonating on impact. Had that not been the case, most likely a full third of the High Seas Fleet's battle line would have gone to the bottom.
She was affectionately called "The Gin Palace" by her crew due to the luxurious officers wardroom.
As pointed out by another poster, it's also a pun: A Gin Court, like a royal court, held in a palace
imagine 3 guns/turret and 15 inch. firing in cycle like a V8... that would be nasty!!!
For anyone who wants a really good read about this battleship and the other South American and or Balkan battleships Aidan Dodson's Windfall Battleships is an excellent read!
The four twin turret layout on ships like HMS warspite seem to be the best choice, plus it was more aesthetically pleasing..
My great-grandfather served aboard her during the great war with the rank of leading seaman after the war he was paid off and joined the Merchant Navy.
who here just loves soaking up WW1 and WW2 engineering facts and information
(i can retain more knowledge about this stuff can i ever could with any subject throughout highschool, even after years of learning)
Title: Agicnourt
Me: Gesundheit
Never miss a Historigraph video
I would imagine that this many guns would be difficult to keep supplied from the magazine.
The British already had an issue keeping guns in battery because their gunnery was so fast due to crew training. To compensate, the British began disregarding safety and lining the corridors with ammo. This would allow them to feed the guns faster in the early fight but was disastrous if they were hit.
The name agincourt is quite fitting.
The battle of agincourt is where king henry V won a major victory against all odds versus france
The massive amount of longbows he fielded in his army provided overwhelming fire power and were the key factor in the english winning
Please do more videos on British dreadnoughts 🙏🙏🙏
Too many guns is a difficult concept to grasp.
Each turret requires a magazine that must be heavily armoured, adding lots of extra weight that could, instead, be spent on armouring other parts of the ship. That's why fewer turrets of heavier guns got to be the norm.
With three stern turrets, placing Agincourt in trail at Jutland was a logical assignment.
The amount of powder and ammo a ship like this would need to carry to feed all those deck guns must have been astronomical.
Having heard this, now imagine the Tillman II design with 4 Six-gun turrets
That last line was savage.
[Monk] you need 8 turrets then they would be even.
The literal embodiment of:
“if gun don’t work…Use more gun”
-engineer tf2
Tbh with less armor and that many guns, which I assume needs more ammo, I expected a very big boom to be the end of this story
Honestly that makes it sound less like a battleship more of a battlecruiser. That or it used the all or nothing armor scheme where only armor was surrounding the vital areas (magazines and machinery spaces).
Sweet! I've been looking for more info on this ship and what the issue was with having a turrent named aftery everyday of the workweek. Time to find out!
I like the subtle Illinois in the corner for comparison to Europe 😂😂😂
It would have been a sight to see those broadsides. She would have been a beast at shore bombardment.
Designer: "How many gun turrets do you want?"
Brazil: "Yes."
Designer: "No, I mean how many?"
Brazil: "All of them."
Simply splendid
not too many guns, Too many turrets
Yep, 5 turrets of 3 barrels each would have been more guns, better design.
A very interesting and thank for making the videos.
Super interesting!! these videos are great
How many guns do you want?
HMS Agincourt: Yes
Love ur vids!
Sounds like the perfect ship for coastal bombardments
"How many guns do you want on this ship?"
"Yes."
6:37 nice naming system
Absolutely no danger that firing all the guns at once could cause structural damage to the hull, given the vast difference in mass between fourteen 12" shells and the ship. The nickname "The Gin Palace" is such a perfect dad joke - another name for a palace is a court, as in, A Gin Court.
Too many guns?! As an American, I’ve never heard of such a concept before. Please explain!
Ironically Ottoman Empire entered WWI largely due to another battleship.
Battle cruiser SMS Goeben /Yavuz Sultan Selim.
They joined more because of railroads actually. The Berlin-Baghdad Railway was vital to the Ottomans if they could finish it. And when your buddy is in a state of war with this vital railway unfinished you would be likely to join if only to make sure it gets finished. Not to mention there is the little detail that Germany was the only major power in Europe that piss off the Ottomans at any point in their history. HMS Agincourt isn’t even the most Egregious thing the Brits did to the Ottomans. That would probably be taking Egypt out from under them.
Considering Agincourt was won by the mass firepower of the bow, the name was deliciously fitting.
Now, if she had a sister ship, it should have been named Crecy.
One of the things I think that's goes unnoticed is the use of the correct flag ratios. I think it's pretty neat to pay that attention in this videos
Love your vids.
The old intro's music was epic and much better.
I enjoyed seeing the old photos of Newcastle, and the church spire at the end of my street in Elswick!
I like the 4 by 2 lay out. 3x3 became common but, i wonder at the agility of smaller guns.
Very interesting video.