The six ships of the were ordered in response to the Russian s that had been launched in 1898. The Russian ships were fast second-class battleships, so William Henry White, the British Director of Naval Construction, designed the "Duncan" class to match the purported top speed of the Russian vessels. To achieve the higher speed while keeping displacement from growing, White was forced to reduce the ships' armour protection significantly, effectively making the ships enlarged and improved versions of the s of 1896, rather than derivatives of the more powerful , , and series of first-class battleships. The "Duncan"s proved to be disappointments in service, owing to their reduced defensive characteristics, though they were still markedly superior to the "Peresvet"s they had been built to counter.