How a fleet of modern-sized warships would look in 1900

How would a navy building ships as large as modern surface combatants have been viewed around 1900?

As though it were building an entire fleet of capital ships or battleships.

The answer translates modern warship displacement into the categories understood at the turn of the twentieth century. Ships of that scale would not be read as ordinary escorts. Observers in 1900 would ask whether the navy was building a whole battle fleet of capital ships, showing how classification depends on the size norms of its era.