HMS Magnificent was one of the nine pre-dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy. She entered service in late 1895 with the Channel Fleet, remaining with the fleet through its subsequent reorganisation into the Atlantic Fleet. In 1905, an explosion caused the deaths of 18 men but she remained in service until 1906, after which she underwent a refit. She served with the Home Fleet for most of her pre-war service. Among the oldest of Britain's battleships at the time, Magnificent was a guard ship on the Humber when World War I broke out. She was then, together with her sister ship , assigned to Scapa Flow as a guard ship. In 1915, she was stripped of her main armament, and later in that year was converted to a troopship for use in the Dardanelles Campaign. Returning to England in 1916, she was inactive until late 1917, at which time she was converted to an ammunition ship. She continued to serve in this role until 1921, at which time she was decommissioned before being scrapped the following year. Design Magnificent was long overall and had a beam of and a draft of . She displaced up to at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of two 3-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines powered by eight coal-fired, cylindrical fire-tube boilers. By 1907–1908, she was re-boilered with oil-fired models. Her engines provided a top speed of at . The Majestics were considered good seaboats with an easy roll and good steamers, although they suffered from high fuel consumption. She had a crew of 672 officers and ratings. The ship was armed with a main battery of four BL Mk VIII guns in twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft. The turrets were placed on pear-shaped barbettes; six of her sisters had the same arrangement, but her sisters and and all future British battleship classes had circular barbettes. Magnificent also carried a secondary battery of twelve QF /40 guns. They were mounted in casemates in two gun decks amidships. She also carried sixteen QF 12-pounder guns and twelve QF 2-pounder guns for defence against torpedo boats. She was also equipped with five torpedo tubes, four of which were submerged in the ship's hull, with the last in a deck-mounted launcher. Magnificent and the other Majestic-class ships had 9 inches (229 mm) of Harvey steel in their belt armour, which allowed equal protection with less cost in