Wednesday Dreadnought: SMS Nassau

The Imperial German Navy's response to Dreadnought was a more conservative design, and above all enshrining the philosophy that a ships first duty is to stay afloat therefore she sacrificed throw weight and speed, but was far better compartmentalized to absorb damage.

SMS Nassau^[a] was the first dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial German Navy, a response to the launching of the British battleship HMS Dreadnought.^[2] Nassau was laid down on 22 July 1907 at the Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven, and launched less than a year later on 7 March 1908, approximately 25 months after Dreadnought was launched. She was the lead ship of her class of four battleships, which included Posen, Rheinland, and Westfalen.
Nassau saw service in the North Sea in the beginning of World War I, in the II Division of the I Battle Squadron of the German High Seas Fleet. In August 1915, she entered the Baltic Sea and participated in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, where she engaged the Russian battleship Slava. Following her return to the North Sea, Nassau and her sister ships took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. During the battle, Nassau collided with the British destroyer HMS Spitfire. Nassau suffered a total of 11 killed and 16 injured during the engagement.
After World War I, the bulk of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow. As they were the oldest German dreadnoughts, the Nassau-class ships were for the time permitted to remain in German ports. After the German fleet was scuttled, Nassau and her three sisters were surrendered to the victorious powers as replacements for the sunken ships. Nassau was ceded to Japan in April 1920. With no use for the ship, Japan sold her to a British wrecking firm which then scrapped her in Dordrecht, Netherlands.