SMS Kronprinzessin Erzherzogin Stephanie
Kronprinzessin Erzherzogin Stephanie
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 Austria-Hungary
|
|
| Name: | Kronprinzessin Erzherzogin Stephanie |
| Namesake: | Stephanie, Crown Princess of Austria |
| Builder: | Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino |
| Laid down: | 12 November 1884 |
| Launched: | 14 April 1887 |
| Commissioned: | July 1889 |
| Decommissioned: | 1905 |
| Fate: | Ceded to Italy as war prize, broken up, 1926 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 5,075 metric tons (4,995 long tons) |
| Length: | 87.24 m (286 ft 3 in) o/a |
| Beam: | 17.06 m (56 ft 0 in) |
| Draft: | 6.6 m (21 ft 8 in) |
| Installed power: | 8,000 ihp (6,000 kW) |
| Propulsion: | 2 × compound steam engines |
| Speed: | 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph) |
| Crew: | 430 |
| Armament: |
|
| Armor: |
|
SMS Kronprinzessin Erzherzogin Stephanie was an ironclad warship built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the 1880s, the last vessel of that type to be built for Austria-Hungary. The ship, named for Archduchess Stephanie, Crown Princess of Austria, was laid down in November 1884, was launched in April 1887 and completed in July 1889. She was armed with a pair of 30.5-centimeter (12.0 in) guns in open barbettes and had a top speed of 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph). Her service was limited, in large part due to the rapid pace of naval development in the 1890s, which quickly rendered her obsolescent. As a result, her career was generally limited to routine training and the occasional visit to foreign countries. In 1897, she took part in an international naval demonstration to force a compromise over Greek and Ottoman claims to the island of Crete. Kronprinzessin Erzherzogin Stephanie was decommissioned in 1905, hulked in 1910, and converted into a barracks ship in 1914. After Austria-Hungary's defeat in World War I, the ship was transferred to Italy as a war prize and was eventually broken up for scrap in 1926.
In the decades that followed the Austrian victory at the Battle of Lissa in 1866, naval expenditure in the Austro-Hungarian Empire were drastically reduced, in large part due to the veto power the Hungarian half of the empire held. Surrounded by potentially hostile countries powers on land, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was more concerned with these threats, and so naval development was not prioritized. Admiral Friedrich von Pöck argued for several years to improve the strength of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, finally winning authorization to build the center battery ship Tegetthoff in 1875. He spent another six years trying in vain to secure a sister ship to Tegetthoff. In 1881, he called for a fleet of eleven armored warships in 1881. Pöck's successor, Maximilian Daublebsky von Sterneck, ultimately had to resort to budgetary sleight of hand, appropriating funds that had been allocated to modernize the ironclad Erzherzog Ferdinand Max to build an entirely new vessel. He attempted to conceal the deception by referring to the ship officially as Ferdinand Max, though the actual Ferdinand Max was still anchored in Pola as a school ship.
...
Wikipedia