Powered by revolutionary steam turbines, the Dreadnought could outstrip any of her contemporaries. Bristling with state-of-the-art weaponry, her twin-funnelled silhouette projected majesty and menace in roughly equal measure. She was so synonymous with British naval might that her name was used as shorthand for the entire generation of ships commissioned after her. Her well-scrubbed decks were not an obvious staging ground for one of the twentieth century’s most imaginatively conceived, carefully planned and flawlessly executed practical jokes. Yet on one notorious afternoon in February 1910,
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