Naval treaties created opportunities as well as constraints

Interwar naval treaties imposed genuine constraints on Royal Navy shipbuilding, yet their effects were more complicated than a simple British defeat. Britain lost the G3 battlecruisers and the freedom to pursue larger guns. Its postwar shipbuilding industry still had many yards competing for scarce orders, so later post-1945 austerity is a poor guide to construction costs in the early 1920s. The Washington settlement also gave American politicians a paper navy equal to Britain's even when Congress had not funded every authorized ship. This spared Britain an expensive Anglo-American building race while the Royal Navy remained larger in actual service. The same attention to definitions and concessions explains HMS Unicorn's unusual legal status.