ABSTRACT
The American dreadnought had been conceived in the womb of naval insurgency. The dreadnought had been launched on a new career, that of a bargaining chip. As might be expected, enthusiasm for the dreadnought program fell off rapidly outside the immediate circle of Woodrow Wilson and his naval advisers. By late 1918 both the Navy's technical bureaus and the talented young officers in operations had come to the conclusion that the flimsy battle cruisers and sluggish dreadnoughts of the 1916 program should be curtailed in favor of a single capital ship, the so-called C-type, or fast battleship. Meanwhile Wilson would again find it necessary to begin brandishing battleships. Since 10 July, when the president had submitted the Versailles Treaty to the Senate, the pact's Republican opponents had seized upon every opportunity for obstruction. By May 1920 Admiral Sims would be informed by the Office of Naval Intelligence that twenty-eight British battleships had been marked for the scrap heap.
