Almirante Latorre as a construction benchmark

Chile's Almirante Latorre, later HMS Canada, is the closest built comparison for the Dutch proposals. Armstrong Whitworth laid her down at Elswick in November 1911 and launched her exactly two years later, showing how quickly a British yard could put a comparable 14-inch-gun ship in the water. She carried an extra twin main-gun turret and was slightly slower than the Dutch requirement, so she was not a direct template. Her Royal Navy acquisition in September 1914 and commissioning in October 1915 were shaped by wartime takeover and interruptions in Chilean payment and procurement. Those caveats make the ship a useful benchmark for scale and industrial timing without turning its schedule into an automatic prediction for the Netherlands.