Following the development of pre-dreadnought type battleships carrying heavy secondary guns of diameter in the Italian "Regia Marina" and the United States Navy, the Royal Navy decided to build similar ships. Initial proposals called for a battleship equipped with eight guns to support the main battery, though under the direction of William Henry White, the Director of Naval Construction, these were replaced with four guns. The new ships, though based on the general type that had formed the basis of the preceding four battleship designs, marked the first significant change in the series. Like all late pre-dreadnoughts that entered service in the mid-1900s, "Africa" was made almost instantaneously obsolescent by the commissioning of the all-big-gun in December 1906, armed with a battery of ten heavy guns compared to the typical four of most pre-dreadnoughts.