page_title: SMS Budapest
section_title: Description and construction
hierarchical_section_title: SMS Budapest / Description and construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Monarch-class battleship drawing.
context_page_description: SMS Budapest was a Monarch-class coastal defense ship built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the 1890s. After their commissioning, Budapest and the two other Monarch-class ships made several training cruises in the Mediterranean Sea in the early 1900s. Budapest and her sisters formed the 1st Capital Ship Division of the Austro-Hungarian Navy until they were replaced by the newly commissioned Habsburg-class pre-dreadnought battleships at the turn of the century. In 1906 the three Monarchs were placed in reserve and only recommissioned during the annual summer training exercises. After the start of World War I, Budapest was recommissioned and assigned to 5th Division together with her sisters.
  The division was sent to Cattaro in August 1914 to attack Montenegrin and French artillery that was bombarding the port, and they remained there until mid-1917. Budapest and her sister Wien were sent to Trieste in August and bombarded Italian fortifications in the Gulf of Trieste. The ship was briefly decommissioned in early 1918 and became an accommodation ship, but she was fitted with a large siege howitzer for shore bombardment shortly afterwards and recommissioned.
context_section_description: At only 5,785 tonnes (5,694 long tons) maximum displacement, the Monarch class was less than half the size of the battleships of other major navies at the time and were officially designated as coast defense ships. The Austro-Hungarian government believed that the role of its navy was solely to defend her coast.
  Budapest had an overall length of 99.22 meters (325 ft 6 in), a beam of 17 meters (55 ft 9 in) and a draft of 6.4 meters (21 ft 0 in). Her two 4-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines produced a total of 9,100 indicated horsepower (6,800 kW) using steam from 16 Belleville boilers. These gave the ship a maximum speed of 17.8 knots (33.0 km/h; 20.5 mph). Budapest's maximum load of 500 metric tons (490 LT) of coal gave her a range of 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) at a speed of 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph). She was manned by 26 officers and 397 enlisted men, a total of 423 personnel.
  The armament of the Monarch class consisted of four 240-millimeter (9.4 in) Krupp K/94 guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. The ships carried 80 rounds for each gun. Their secondary armament was six 150-millimeter (6 in) Škoda guns located in casemates in the superstructure. Defense against torpedo boats was provided by ten quick-firing (QF) 47 mm (1.9 in) Škoda guns and four 47-millimeter QF Hotchkiss guns. The ships also mounted two 450-millimeter (18 in) torpedo tubes, one on each broadside. Each torpedo tube was provided with two torpedoes.   In 1917 a Škoda 7 cm K10 anti-aircraft gun was installed.
  The ship's nickel-steel waterline armor belt was 120–270 millimeters (4.7–10.6 in) thick, and the gun turrets were protected by 250 millimeters (9.8 in) of armor. The casemates had 80 millimeters (3.1 in) thick sides while the conning tower had 220 millimeters (8.7 in) of armor. Budapest's deck armor was 40 millimeters (1.6 in) thick.
  The Monarch-class ships were ordered in May 1892 with Budapest and Wien to be built at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard in Trieste. Both ships were laid down on 16 February 1893, the first ships in the class to be laid down. Budapest was launched on 27 April 1896 by Countess Marie Széchényí-Andrássy, wife of the Governor of Fiume, and commissioned on 12 May 1898.
caption: Right elevation and plan of the Monarch class; the shaded area is armored.
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