The ships removed included all battleships and armoured cruisers of earlier date than the _Trafalgar_, several ships of the _Apollo_ class, all earlier protected cruisers, some of the “P” class, and the bulk of the small fry in the way of sloops and gunboats. This action aroused a certain amount of criticism on the grounds that the clearance was excessive. As some of the ships were subsequently restored to the active list, something is undoubtedly to be said for that point of view; especially as no steps were taken to replace the scrapped cruisers. On the other hand, most of the ships removed were of trivial fighting value; though here again the zeal of the reformer somewhat overlooked the fact that the police duties rendered by the small fry had been valuable. In connection with this policy some of the outlying naval bases were done away with, and there commenced a “reorganisation” of the Fleet which has continued intermittently from that day to this! Certain other considerable changes affecting the _personnel_ will be found dealt with in a later chapter. IV. THE DREADNOUGHT ERA--(WATTS). A new era in battleship design, not only for the British Navy, but for the navies of the entire world, was opened with the advent of the _Dreadnought_. As has been seen, it was in a way led up to by previous designs, notably the _Lord Nelson_ class. The essential point of difference, however, lies in the fact that whereas the _Lord Nelson_ carries heavy guns of two calibres, in the _Dreadnought_ the main armament is confined to one calibre only. The advantages of this on paper are not particularly great, but for practical purposes, such as fire control and so forth, the superiority to be obtained by a uniformity of big gun armament is tremendous. As the historical portion of this book indicates, the “Dreadnought idea” has been a fairly regular feature of British Naval Policy, but in this particular case the inception would seem to have been due to accident and circumstance rather than to any settled policy. Immature and abortive attempts to realise something of the “Dreadnought ideal” had taken place in the past. The earliest ship claimed to represent the Dreadnought ideal was the U.S. _Roanoake_, built at the time of the Civil War. This was a high freeboard ship, fitted with three turrets in the centre line. A few years later something of the same sort found expression in the four-turreted British _Royal Sovereign_ and _Prince Albert_, though these were merely coast defence ships. Still later in the _Tchesma_ class, Russian, and in the _Brandenburg_ class of the German Navy, six big guns were installed as the primary armament. Both these two ideas were laughed out of existence; and it became a settled fashion to carry four big guns, two forward and two aft. [Illustration: GENERAL CUNIBERTI.]