13: The Naval Arms Race

Sort the following into an order that makes sense and fit it into the time-line on Page 2

  1. The British public became very much involved in the race. In 1909 the popular cry was, ‘We want eight, we won’t wait’, and a Navy League was formed to campaign for more and more ships.
  1. By 1914 the ships carried fifteen-inch guns and their oil-fired turbine engines could reach a top speed of twenty-five knots.
  1. As the strongest navy in the world war Britain’s, they were a direct challenge by the British government.
  1. In the 1909 Budget, the British government provided for the building of the eight ships that the public demanded, but by then the Naval Arms Race had in fact been won.
  1. At the beginning of the twentieth century naval power was reckoned on the basis of the number of battleships that a navy possessed, so the German actions were seen as a real threat by Britain.

6.  The German Navy Laws laid out plans to build a navy to challenge the Royal Navy over a period of twenty years.

  1. The German navy replied by building ‘Dreadnoughts’ of its own and a Naval Arms Race began.
  1. The First Navy Law announced that Germany would build a fleet strong enough to combat the strongest navy in the world. As the strongest navy in the world war Britain’s, this was taken as a direct challenge by the British government.
  1. In 1906 the British government responded by launching HMS Dreadnought, a battleship which made all existing battleships obsolete. It carried ten twelve-inch guns and had a top speed of twenty-one knots.
  1. From 1906 to 1914 the British built twenty-nine Dreadnoughts and the Germans built seventeen.
  1. In 1900 the Second Navy Law provided for a fleet of thirty-eight battleships to be built in the next twenty years.

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