page_title: Austro-Italian ironclad arms race
section_title: Austria
hierarchical_section_title: Austro-Italian ironclad arms race / Financial impact on the early arms race / Austria
caption_attribution_description: English: The SMS Kaiser in its original configuration. In the background what appears to be a Habsburg class ironclad. Image cropped by uploader.
context_page_description: A naval arms race between the Austrian Empire and Italy began in the 1860s when both ordered a series of ironclad warships, steam-propelled vessels protected by iron or steel armor plates and far more powerful than all-wood ships of the line. These ships were constructed to establish control over the Adriatic Sea in the event of a conflict between the two countries.
  The unification of much of Italy in this time period resulted in the amalgamation of the various navies of the former Italian states into the Regia Marina. The Sardinian component included two Formidabile-class ironclads, ordered from France in 1860, which became Italy's first broadside ironclads. The country quickly began a substantial construction program to bolster the Regia Marina, as the Italians believed that a strong navy would play a crucial role in making the recently unified kingdom a great power.
  These actions captured the attention of the Austrian Empire, which viewed Italy with great suspicion and worry, as irredentist claims by Italian nationalists were directed at key Austrian territories such as Venice, Trentino, and Trieste.
context_section_description: The Austrian naval budget of 1862 would prove to be the largest such outlay the Imperial Austrian Navy would receive until 1900. Even so, the 1863 budget of only 8,900,000 Florins was far less than what Archduke Ferdinand Max had hoped for. This limited his ability to construct additional ironclads, having to scrap the third planned ship for the Erzherzog Ferdinand Max class. Ferdinand Max ran into even more financial issues when his plans to convert the ship-of-the-line Kaiser had to be delayed due to a lack of funds. As a result, Austria was only able to construct seven ironclads between 1860 and 1865, as opposed to the nine Ferdinand Max had previously advocated for to the Austrian Reichsrat in April 1861.
  In a bid to maintain the navy's finances in the face of potential budget cuts, Ferdinand Max attempted to cut expenditures in nearly every aspect of the Imperial Austrian Navy outside of ironclad construction. Patrols conducted by the Imperial Austrian Navy were severely curtailed, and warships rarely left the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, with the exception of Tegetthoff's patrol off the coast of Greece to protect Austrian interests in the Balkan kingdom during Greece's constitutional crisis between 1862 and 1863, Austrian warships hardly ever ventured out beyond the Adriatic Sea. The smaller Austrian naval budgets also forced Ferdinand Max to reluctantly turn down proposals from foreign shipbuilders to construct additional ironclad warships for the Imperial Austrian Navy. Among those whose offers the Archduke had to reject for a lack of funds were American shipbuilder John Ericsson, the designer of USS Monitor, and the Arman Brothers shipyard in Bordeaux, which was constructing the Italian ironclad Ancona.
  Ferdinand Max was forced to acquire the funds he needed to expand Austria's ironclad battle fleet by selling off older vessels in the Imperial Austrian Navy's possession. Indeed, the speed in which Italy had been constructing or purchasing new ironclads since 1860, coupled with his own desire to keep pace with Italian ironclad acquisitions, forced the Archduke to consider selling nearly all of Austria's wooden vessels. His first opportunity to do so came in November 1862 when he attempted to negotiate the sale of older frigates and corvettes to Confederate arms dealer Louis Merton. In February 1863, this potential deal grew more likely, as the Archduke compiled a series of unarmored ships he believed the Imperial Austrian Navy could part with. This list included a frigate, two corvettes, 14 gunboats and schooners, and nine paddle steamers. Ferdinand Max offered all 26 ships to Merton for roughly six million florins, enough to theoretically enable him to construct the one large armored frigate which could serve as the flagship of the Imperial Austrian Navy. Unfortunately for the Archduke, Merton rejected the offer as the Confederate government had instructed him to only purchase ironclads, or ships capable of navigating the North American Intracoastal Waterway.
  Further attempts to purchase ironclads from British shipyards which had been constructing them for the Confederacy in late 1863 failed as well, due to the sheer costs of the warships involved. Despite an increase in funds under the 1864 budget to some 12,100,000 Florins, none of the money the Reichsrat had allocated to the Imperial Austrian Navy were earmarked for ironclad construction or purchases, leaving Ferdinand Max with the same seven ironclads as before. Faced with political gridlock and having been offered the throne of the Second Mexican Empire in October 1863, Archduke Ferdinand Max resigned his post as Oberkommandant der Marine in early 1864 before sailing to Mexico aboard the frigate Novara to become Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico.
  In the years after Ferdinand Max's departure from Austria, the Imperial Austrian Navy suffered under further political and budgetary constraints. In April 1864, it was proposed that the naval ministry, which the former Archduke had helped to establish, be disbanded. In January 1865, Emperor Franz Joseph I dissolved the 
caption: The Austrian ship-of-the-line Kaiser. Due to financial constraints, plans to convert her into an ironclad had to be delayed until after the Seven Weeks War.
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