Contemporary Brassey's figures put the average cost of the eight Diadems at roughly £593,000, although different editions report slightly different totals. Andromeda and especially Spartiate sit above the other ships, even though Pembroke was a naval dockyard without a private builder's profit margin. Those two hulls pull the class average upward while every other ship falls below it. Their cost variance warns against assuming that state construction was automatically cheaper. The figures also show how a class average can conceal important differences in shipyard performance and procurement control.
Notable Point · 22:22-27:03
What the Diadem accounts reveal about dockyard cost control
Andromeda and Spartiate made the state-built Pembroke ships conspicuous cost outliers within an otherwise cheaper cruiser program.