These ships embody the all-big-gun principle in association with a powerful secondary armament, consisting of a dozen 5·9-inch guns and sixteen 24-pounders. Moreover, whereas the British Dreadnought had been provided with only ten big guns, which was held by the British gunnery experts to be the maximum number which could be carried with advantage on the displacement then considered advisable, the German vessels were given twelve guns, not of the 12-inch but of the 11-inch type. Each of these ships displaces 18,600 tons, and has a nominal speed of twenty knots. Their normal coal capacity is 885 tons, with a maximum storage of 2,655 tons. On the other hand, the early British _Dreadnought_, with about the same displacement and coal-carrying capacity, attained a speed of one or two knots more, owing to the use of turbines in place of reciprocating engines. The contrast between the armour and armament of the British and German ships, comparing the four Nassaus of the German Fleet[14] with the Superb class of the British Navy, is given in the table on p. 129. By energetic action the British Admiralty had obtained a lead in the new type of battleship.[15] Moreover, even after the character of the Dreadnought became known, the German authorities remained ignorant of the fact that the "armoured cruisers" of the Invincible class were really swift battleships carrying the same type of battle gun as the _Dreadnought_, in association with a speed exceeding twenty-five knots, and an armour belt not inferior to that placed on the latest pre-Dreadnought German battleships. By this decisive move, the British authorities had depressed the value of all mixed armament battleships, in which the British Fleet was becoming weak in face of foreign--and particularly German--rivalry, and had started the competition of armaments on an entirely new basis upon terms of advantage. No sooner was the true inwardness of the Dreadnought policy realized than the German authorities began the preparation of a new German Navy Act. It was eventually decided that the best