Empire Rising: Spain

Compared to ironclads, the investment in armored cruisers is lower. This leads to a reduction in the protection of armored cruisers during ship design, ensuring that they can have firepower comparable to ironclads.

Simply put, an armored cruiser is a cruiser equipped with main battleship guns, with armor protection only slightly stronger than ordinary cruisers, far inferior to the large-scale ironclads deployed by various countries.

This type of warship was initially funded by Russia for construction, intended only as auxiliary ships to provide additional firepower for the main fleet warships.

However, with Russia’s decline, during the Russo-Japanese War, these warships with obvious defects became Russia’s main warships. Because the armor of armored cruisers is relatively weak, they eventually suffered heavy enemy attacks during the war.

Under the influence of Carlo, Spain’s attitude towards the navy is that it can refrain from building main warships, but if built, they must be the best main warships.

After years of hard work, the Royal Guanizuo Shipyard finally produced a warship that satisfied the navy’s military personnel, which is also the reason for the military’s proposal to build the navy.

The new ship’s design is better described as an improvement on the Rejuvenation-class ironclad by the Royal Guanizuo Shipyard rather than an entirely new design.

Of course, the improvements are substantial. This ensures that the new ship’s design remains world-class, effectively strengthening the Spanish Navy’s power.

In terms of power, the new warship will use two sets of twin-cylinder reverse compound expansion steam engines, with a total of 12 cylindrical boilers and twin-shaft propulsion, which can provide approximately 7000 horsepower under natural ventilation.

If converted to forced ventilation mode, it can provide the warship with about 9600 horsepower, a significant improvement over the Rejuvenation-class ironclad.

With enhanced power, the shipyard can showcase its skills in terms of the warship’s armor and artillery.

Regarding the main artillery, the warship still uses the 12-inch 305-mm breech-loading naval gun, a product of cooperation between Spanish military enterprises and Austrian military enterprises, with significant improvements in range and power.

Although the caliber is the same as the Rejuvenation-class ironclad’s main gun, the firepower has been increased by at least 20% overall.

Further improvements are in armor protection. Effective cooperation with Germany has significantly enhanced Spain’s steel production capabilities, and this ironclad’s armor will use Spain’s latest special steel plates, with protection capabilities improved by at least 30% over previous ordinary steel armor.

Currently, Spain’s steel production easily supplies adequate steel plates for protecting a warship, making the armor thickness in this ship design even more exaggerated than the previous Rejuvenation-class ironclad.

From the ironclad’s armor protection capability, it becomes clear why Spain is not interested in armored cruisers. Although the difference in firepower is not large, an ironclad can withstand several main cannon bombardments if no weak points are hit.

But an armored cruiser cannot do that. Once hit by an enemy main battleship’s cannon, it will suffer damage or destruction, significantly affecting combat effectiveness.

Returning to Spain’s warship design, due to the increase in armor thickness, the entire ship’s tonnage will reach an astonishing figure.

Just the normal displacement already reaches 9552 tons, and when fully loaded, this warship’s displacement can instantly exceed ten thousand tons, marking Spain’s first true ten-thousand-ton giant ship.

However, due to the power upgrades, even though this new ironclad design reaches the ten-thousand-ton class, the Royal Guanizuo Shipyard estimates the warship’s top speed can still reach about 17 knots.

Overall, this warship’s design is not only powerful in firepower but also excellent in armor protection capability, and its speed is quite fast.

When fully loaded, this warship can travel 7000 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots, equivalent to nearly 13000 kilometers, approximately the total distance from Spain to the Philippine Colony.

Among the new warship designs, the navy is most satisfied with the speed improvements. Although the Rejuvenation-class ironclad’s various performances were excellent, its speed could only reach about 13 knots, lagging behind other European primary warships.

However, this latest warship has closed the speed gap, and even when fighting against main warships of powerful countries like England and France, there is no need to worry about falling behind in speed.

Even if Spain could massively equip this new class of warship, there is hope to challenge the Royal Navy’s dominant position.

Nevertheless, the British are unlikely to remain indifferent to Spain’s massive construction of main warships. If Spain insists on extensively building warships, it will undoubtedly spark a naval arms race with the United Kingdom and even the entirety of Europe.

Due to not having built main warships in a long time, the naval department submitted a proposal to the Cabinet that included the construction of four main warships.

Unlike the Rejuvenation-class ironclad, which cost no more than 500 thousand Pounds, the estimated cost of this warship is as high as 530 thousand Pounds, and with the shipyard’s building costs added, each warship’s selling price cannot be less than 700 thousand Pounds.

This is still the internal price from the shipyard to the Spanish Government. Selling to other countries would require adding a considerable amount on top of the 700 thousand Pounds price.

The lack of interest in the Rejuvenation-class ironclad makes it clear how challenging it is to sell ironclads externally at present.

The cost of ironclads is excessively high, and large countries have the capacity to build their own, naturally eliminating the need to buy externally.

Small countries with tight budgets cannot afford to spend large amounts on building a single warship.

After all, the cost of a warship includes not only the construction of the ship itself but also the navy’s formation and its subsequent maintenance expenses.

The total cost of a warship adds up to at least a million Pounds, starting, and constructing a fleet would require spending a colossal amount, beginning from several million Pounds.

Simply put, countries without considerable size can’t handle the current fleet configurations at all.

Spanish naval power maintained its position among the world’s top eight even during the weakest periods, primarily because, besides the major international powers, most European countries don’t have any significant naval fleets.

With each warship costing 700 thousand Pounds, Spain needs to spend 18.2 million Pesseta to construct each of the latest ironclads.

The naval department requests the construction of four ironclads, bringing the warship’s total costs to 72.8 million Pesseta. Adding naval personnel training and subsequent maintenance expenses, the naval proposal alone requires the Spanish Government to allocate nearly 100 million Pesseta.

And these are only four primary ships. Equipping a fleet for these four primary ships with all necessary auxiliary warships requires at least an additional 50 million Pesseta investment.

Even though Spain’s finances have improved noticeably, dealing with an investment that easily exceeds a hundred million remains quite troublesome.