A coastal ship belonged inside a wider defensive system rather than a lone duel at sea. A ship like Oden could operate with forts and torpedo-boat flotillas, so an enemy could not assume that one battleship would solve the problem. The attacker might need to send multiple expensive capital ships merely to suppress or intimidate a few smaller defenders. This was the economic and strategic value of the coastal-defence ship: it could force an opponent to overcommit without being designed to win an oceanic battle-line engagement.
Notable Point · 9:45-10:30
Coastal defence as force multiplication
Backed by forts and flotillas, several compact coastal ships can force an attacker to commit a much larger battle fleet simply to threaten the coast.