British yards still lacked orders during the dreadnought race

British yards built export battleships for South American customers while supplying the Royal Navy's dreadnought programme. Even that combined demand left some firms seeking orders, and Thames Ironworks closed despite having built an Orion-class battleship. The argument is that government purchasing decisions limited output more than physical capacity did. A counterfactual programme with more early British dreadnoughts is proposed as a way to make a German numerical challenge appear futile. Germany could still compete through the quality of individual ships, but Britain's available yard capacity made a contest in total numbers difficult to sustain.