page_title: HMS Duncan (1901)
section_title: World War I
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Duncan (1901) / Operational history / World War I
caption_attribution_description: Español: Fotografía del acorazado británico Duncan publicada en 1914 con motivo de la entrada del Reino Unido en la Gran Guerra
context_page_description: HMS Duncan was the lead ship of the six-ship Duncan class of Royal Navy pre-dreadnought battleships. Built to counter a group of fast Russian battleships, Duncan and her sister ships were capable of steaming at 19 knots, making them the fastest battleships in the world. The Duncan-class battleships were armed with a main battery of four 12-inch guns and they were broadly similar to the London-class battleships, though of a slightly reduced displacement and thinner armour layout. As such, they reflected a development of the lighter second-class ships of the Canopus-class battleship. Duncan was built between her keel laying in July 1899 and her completion in October 1903.
  Duncan served with the Mediterranean Fleet until 1905, at which she was transferred to the Channel Fleet. During this period, she was damaged in a pair of accidents, the first a collision with HMS Albion in late 1905 and the second when she ran aground off Lundy Island the following year. Duncan served with the Atlantic Fleet from 1907 to late 1908, when she was transferred back to the Mediterranean Fleet.
context_section_description: Duncan was still undergoing her refit when World War I began in August 1914. Plans originally called for Duncan and battleships Agamemnon, Albemarle, Cornwallis, Exmouth, Russell, and Vengeance to form the 6th Battle Squadron in wartime and serve in the Channel Fleet, where the squadron was to patrol the English Channel and cover the movement of the British Expeditionary Force to France. However, plans also existed for the 6th Battle Squadron to be assigned to the Grand Fleet, and, when the war began, the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, requested that Duncan and her four surviving sister ships (Albemarle, Cornwallis, Exmouth, and Russell) be assigned to the 3rd Battle Squadron in the Grand Fleet for patrol duties to make up for the Grand Fleet's shortage of cruisers. Accordingly, the 6th Battle Squadron was temporarily abolished, and, upon completion of her refit in September 1914, Duncan joined the 3rd Battle Squadron at Scapa Flow, where she joined the Grand Fleet's cruisers on duty in the Northern Patrol.
  Duncan and her four sisters, as well as the battleships of the King Edward VII class, were temporarily transferred to the Channel Fleet on 2 November 1914 to reinforce that fleet in the face of Imperial German Navy activity in the Channel Fleet's area. The following day, the German fleet raided Yarmouth; at the time, Duncan and the rest of the 3rd Squadron were dispersed on the Northern Patrol, and were thus unavailable during the German attack. On 13 November 1914, the King Edward VII-class ships returned to the Grand Fleet, but Duncan and her sister ships stayed in the Channel Fleet, where they reconstituted the 6th Battle Squadron on 14 November 1914. This squadron was given a mission of bombarding German submarine bases on the coast of Belgium, and was based at Portland, although it transferred to Dover immediately on 14 November 1914. However, due a lack of antisubmarine defenses at Dover, particularly after the harbour's anti-submarine boom was swept away in a gale, the squadron returned to Portland on 19 November 1914.
  The 6th Battle Squadron returned to Dover in December 1914, then transferred to Sheerness on 30 December 1914 to relieve the 5th Battle Squadron there in guarding against a German invasion of the United Kingdom. Between January and May 1915, the 6th Battle Squadron was dispersed. Duncan left the squadron in February 1915 to be reduced to reserve for a refit at Chatham that lasted until July 1915. She recommissioned at Chatham on 19 July 1915 and was attached to the 9th Cruiser Squadron on the Finisterre-Azores-Madeira Station. In August 1915, Duncan transferred to the 2nd Detached Squadron in the Adriatic Sea. The squadron had been organized in May 1915 to reinforce the Italian Navy against the Austro-Hungarian Navy after Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. Duncan was based at Taranto, Italy, during this service. Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, the Italian naval chief of staff, believed that the threat from Austro-Hungarian submarines and naval mines in the narrow waters of the Adriatic was too serious for him to use the fleet for active operations. Instead, Revel decided to implement a blockade at the relatively safer southern end of the Adriatic with the main fleet, while smaller vessels, such as the MAS boats, conducted raids on Austro-Hungarian ships and installations.
  In June 1916, Duncan transferred to the 3rd Detached Squadron in the Aegean Sea, based at Salonika. At the time, Greece was ruled by the pro-German Constantine I, who had decided to remain neutral. The Entente powers had landed troops in Salonika in 1915, which was a source of tension between France and Greece. The issue came to a head in August 1916 when a pro-Entente group launched a coup against the monarchy in the Noemvriana. Starting in December 1916, she participated in operations against the Greek royalists, beginning with the landing of Royal Marines at Athens on 1 December 1916 to coerce Constantine to abdicate. The British and French troops were defeated by the Greek Army and armed civili
caption: HMS Duncan in 1914
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