HMS Devastation

As originally conceived by Sir Edward Reed, the Devastation was a very clean design. After being rebuilt and late in life, the Devastation was overloaded with top hamper. The best feature of the original design was that the ship pioneered the more modern gun layout with two turrets with two heavy guns each that was standard until the early 20th Century. The most problematic feature was the low freeboard, although as a breastwork monitor, the Devastation was superior to the pure monitor which had such a low freeboard that at sea the deck would always be awash.