Through the 1910s, our fleet was progressively upgraded with newer ships, although I was reluctant to scrap any of our old ones - and indeed never did scrap any, simply choosing to keep our old ships in reserve or mothballs just in case they were suddenly needed.
But the new additions kept coming. As torpedo technology improved, new torpedo boats and destroyers came along.
The Csepel class were torpedo boats that were not terribly advanced, but had every ounce of performance squeezed out of them, mounting 4 torpedo tubes.
As working with Britain proved positive in their building of our first battlecruisers, we were soon ordering other ships from them as well - including our first oil-fired destroyers, the relatively balanced Maros class.
Our replacements for the "mini-cruisers" of the Aspern class were also to be built in Britain - and the slightly larger and very fast (for its time) Scylla class were that replacement. Although impressive, it quickly became apparent that they were quite expensive. Although 6 were originally ordered, 4 of the orders were substituted for the Diana class, as below:
These were much smaller and cheaper, with otherwise identical armament and performance, although sacrificed range and reliability - and on delivery proved slower than promised. Eventually the two remaining Scyllas proved to be the much better ships, while two of the four Dianas were lost in combat. However, all of these six small cruisers received upgrades, including two-gun turrets on the bow and stern which substantially increased their firepower.
The far more expensive and extravagant cruisers were the Szigetvar class, build as replacement for the Saida class. They did well in combat, but two of the four of them were lost in our last conflict.
By the later part of the 1910s, our fleet was looking more and more modern.
The T-14 class of destroyers, also built in Britain, were a very modern, large ship - already starting to approach our small cruisers in size, and no less capable in armament. They bore the brunt of fighting against the French - and though they had many very successful moments, they often paid a heavy price, with 3 of them being lost in action.
British engineering also gave us our most capable battlecruisers; and while the Monarch class were the last of our ships ordered from a foreign yard (as our technology had in most regards caught up with world-class by 1917), they certainly proved themselves worthy, particularly due to their very capable 15-inch armament, able to deliver a 10-gun broadside (triple turrets fore and aft, and two staggered wing turrets mounting two guns each, capable of limited cross-deck fire). The Monarch was lost in a catastrophic turret explosion in the last war (British-built battlecruiser, go figure...), but her sister Kaiser certainly brought plenty of revenge afterward.
And finally, the oddest British-built ship in our stable was this one:
Although not the last ship of ours to be designed in Britain, we kept building them for quite a while - mostly because their already promising performance on paper turned out even better in reality. They exceeded specification by easily reaching 32 knots in service, making them capable of catching not only cruisers, but even most destroyers. Although they were named after a camel and had the looks of an oversized fishing trawler - and a very high pricetag, the Dromedars achieved their fast speed due to mounting all of their main 6-inch guns on the centerline, saving a great deal of weight.
However, in service they proved to be a disappointment - for reasons not entirely clear, despite their speed they fared poorly, and of the six built, four were quickly lost to the French, largely while on screening duty with battlecruisers.
So, speaking of the French - our dastardly enemy finally came at us in 1923 with a generally more powerful but more spread-out navy. They wanted to try and check our expansion in the Mediterranean, just as we were in the process of modernizing our navy. The final war, which lasted 2.5 years, proved to be very different from the ones that came before it - with technology having advanced, the battles were fierce and the losses were many. With their ships being somewhat more modern on average, we suffered several very costly defeats early in the war - and though we had managed to avenge them, we still lost 35 surface ships of various sorts during this war, versus France losing only 25 warships. In the end, the war ended on a negotiated peace agreement, as both sides found themselves at a stalemate and facing prospects of heavy losses were another major battle to happen.
Our final ships, commissioned in the months before the war ended, never ended up seeing action - after heavy battlecruiser battles, both fleets kept back for the last period of the war, and the only battles to occur in late 1925-early 1926 involved only cruisers, destroyers, and auxiliary ships.
The Arpad class were an impressive trio, a modern class of superdreadnoughts armed with 4-gun turrets and mounting much better armor than the rest of our fleet. However, even with them in service, we could not tip the balance of power sufficiently to our side, and so the war ended.
At the end of this war, I'd retired from my command of the navy with a prestige score of 59 (anything over 50 is considered a strong performance). The navy promised to name an aircraft carrier after me in the next age.
Well, and that was that, hope you enjoyed all the ships
