Nice Photo Tour of the Mikasa

[abaris]

Do you know why the guns were pointed port side but the ship rolled to starboard?

Actually I do. They tried to counterweight the list. The Szent Istvan floated for quite some time before finally sinking and they were hoping to salvage it. It was sunk by an Italian torpedo boat, more or less ending the age of the battleship. A low end vessel sinking a high end battleship.

But wouldn't you want to know why virtually all WWI battleships had ram bows? It was because of an Austrian victory at sea. The battle of Lissa in 1866. Out of necessity, since the artillery wasn't up to scratch, a visionary admiral resorted to classical strategies of ramming the opponent. Virtually every navy in the world adapted the ram bow after that.