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 Canopus-class battleships of 1896, rather than derivatives of the more powerful Majestic, Formidable, and London series of first-class battleships.

The Duncans proved to be disappointments in service, owing to their reduced defensive characteristics, though they were still markedly superior to the Peresvets they had been built to counter.

The Duncan-class ships were powered by a pair of 4-cylinder triple-expansion engines that drove two screws, with steam provided by twenty-four Belleville boilers.

At a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), the ship could steam for 6,070 nautical miles (11,240 km; 6,990 mi).

Heavy fog forced her to reverse course and steam back to Lundy Island after four hours, but her navigator miscalculated the course, placing her some two miles off her original track.

The bottom of the ship also received extensive damage, including several other holes and the port propeller shaft having been torn from the hull.

[5] The navy initially hoped to lighten the ship by removing the medium and small-caliber guns and other equipment that could be easily taken off and then to pump out the water so that the holes in the hull could be patched.

Difficulties with pumping, owing in part to the subdivision of the internal compartments and the need to reflood the ship during high tide to keep her from suffering more damage before the hull could be patched, led the salvors to give up the operation.

[7] Wilson next sought to remove armour plate from the sides of the ship and to erect a series of caissons, at which point a powerful air pump would be used to blow the water out of the hull.

The caissons repeatedly broke free even in mild seas, and the air pump failed to have the desired effect.

Her sister ship Duncan herself ran aground whilst trying to help the salvage effort, though she was successfully freed.

However, an inspection of the ship conducted from 1 to 10 October 1906 found that the action of the sea was driving her further ashore and bending and warping her hull so that her seams were beginning to open, her deck planking was coming apart, and her boat davits had collapsed.