Kaiser Max-class ironclad (1875)

In the early 1870s, the head of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Friedrich von Pöck, repeatedly tried to secure funding from parliament for new ironclad warships, but the government, preoccupied with rebuilding the Austro-Hungarian Army after its crushing defeat at the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, refused to divert funds to the navy's budget for new ships.^[1] In addition, obstruction from the Hungarian half of the empire, which was less concerned with naval matters, added an additional obstacle for the navy in its attempts to improve its fighting strength.^[2]

Reconstruction projects were uncontroversial, however, and so Pöck requested funds to rebuild the old Kaiser Max-class ironclads, intending instead to use the money to build new ships. The new vessels would be built to similar dimensions as the earlier vessels, and some material, including the engines, armor plate, and various fittings, would be reused to save money. To complete the deception, he assigned the ships the same names, which has led to some confusion in subsequent histories,^[3][4] including accepting Pöck's lie that they were the same vessels, despite noting the different dimensions of the hulls.^[5] Part of the confusion owes to the records in the Austrian state and military archives, which refer to the ships as simple conversions, not new constructions.^[6]

The design for the new ships was prepared by Chief Engineer Josef von Romako, who had also designed the earlier Kaiser Maxes. The "reconstructions" proved to be very economical, with the three new ships costing as much as had been spent on the ironclad Erzherzog Albrecht.^[7] The project was not without critics, however; the naval historian R. F. Scheltema de Heere describes the vessels as "hopelessly obsolete".^[8]

The ships of the Kaiser Max class were 75.87 meters (248 ft 11 in) long overall and 73.23 m (240 ft 3 in) long at the waterline. They had a beam of 15.25 m (50 ft) and an average draft of 6.15 m (20 ft 2 in). The ships displaced 3,548 long tons (3,605 t). Each vessel had a crew that ranged from 400 to 440 officers and enlisted men.^[4][9] As was common for ironclads of the period, they had a pronounced ram bow. The ships had a short forecastle deck that terminated at the foremast and a short sterncastle deck that began just aft of the mizzenmast. As completed, the ships had no significant superstructure, but during a modernization later in their careers, a small conning tower was erected. The ships were originally fitted with a three-masted barquentine rig with an area of 1,633.15 square meters (17,579.1 sq ft), but in 1880 the rigging was cut down to 1,156.6 m² (12,450 sq ft). By the 1890s, the ships had their rigging removed altogether and instead carried three masts with fighting tops for light guns.^[4][10]

Their propulsion system consisted of one horizontal, single-expansion, 2-cylinder steam engine that had been salvaged from the earlier Kaiser Maxes. The engine drove a single screw propeller that was 5.64 m (18.5 ft) in diameter. Steam was provided by five coal-fired boilers with thirty fireboxes, which were trunked into a single funnel.^[4][9] The engines were rated to produce a top speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) from 2,755 indicated horsepower (2,054 kW), but Kaiser Max reached a maximum of 13.38 knots (24.78 km/h; 15.40 mph) during her initial trials.^[4][8] Each ship had a storage capacity of 380 long tons (390 t) of coal.^[7]

The Kaiser Max-class ships were casemate ships, which concentrated the main battery in a centrally located armored casemate, which allowed for limited end-on fire, though only forward, unlike earlier ironclads. Their battery of eight 21-centimeter (8.3 in) 20-caliber (cal.) guns manufactured by Krupp were mounted four on each broadside, with the forwardmost guns on each side in an angled gun port. The other three were capable of firing only limited arc to the side. They also carried four 9 cm (3.5 in) 24-cal. guns, two 7 cm (2.8 in) 15-cal. landing guns, six 47 mm (1.9 in) 35-cal. quick-firing guns, three 47 mm (1.9 in) Hotchkiss revolver cannon, and two 25 mm (0.98 in) guns. Each ship of the Kaiser Max class also had four 35 cm (13.8 in) torpedo tubes, one in the bow, one in the stern, and one on each broadside.^[4][11]

The ships' armor protection consisted of an armored belt that was 203 mm (8 in) thick and was capped with 115 mm (4.5 in) thick transverse bulkheads on either end of the citadel. Only the two strakes of the belt armor were newly manufactured; the rest of the iron used to protect the casemate deck came from the earlier Kaiser Max class. The casemate battery was protected with 125 mm (4.9 in) thick plates.^[4] The new belt armor consisted of Bessemer steel.^[12]