Royal Sovereign-class battleship  The "Royal Sovereign" class was a group of eight pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy in the 1890s. The ships spent their careers in the Mediterranean, Home and Channel Fleets, sometimes as flagships, although several were mobilised for service with the Flying Squadron in 1896 when tensions with the German Empire were high following the Jameson Raid in South Africa. Three ships were assigned to the International Squadron formed when Greek Christians rebelled against the Ottoman Empire′s rule in Crete in 1897–1898. By about 1905–1907, they were considered obsolete and were reduced to reserve. The ships began to be sold off for scrap beginning in 1911, although was sunk as a target ship during gunnery trials in 1913. was fitted with the first anti-torpedo bulges to evaluate underwater protection schemes in 1911 before being scuttled as a blockship a few months after the start of the First World War in August 1914. Only survived to see active service in the war, during which she bombarded the Belgian coastline. Renamed "Redoubtable" in 1915, she was hulked later that year as an accommodation ship until she was sold for scrap after the war. By the late 1880s pressure on the government to modernise and expand the Royal Navy was building. A war scare with Russia in 1885 during the Panjdeh Incident, the failure of the blockading fleet to contain the raiding ships in port during the 1888 fleet manoeuvres and more realistic evaluations of the numbers of ships required to perform the tasks required in a war against France, coupled with exposés by influential journalists like W. T. Stead, revealed serious weaknesses in the Navy. The Government responded with the Naval Defence Act 1889, which provided £21.5 million for a vast expansion programme of which the eight ships of the "Royal Sovereign" class were the centrepiece. The Act also formalised the two-power standard, whereby the Royal Navy sought to be as large as the next two major naval powers combined. Preliminary work on what would become the "Royal Sovereign"s began in 1888 and the Board of Admiralty directed the Director of Naval Construction, Sir William White, to design an improved and enlarged version of the . These ships were equipped with gun turrets, the weight of which dictated that they be low-freeboard ships to reduce their topweight. White, however, argued strenuously for a high-freeboard design to improve the new ships' ability to fight and steam in heavy weather.