Steam-engine builders could not promise schedule, power, or efficiency

Building 112 steam rates meant ordering machinery from suppliers that could not guarantee delivery dates, power, or fuel use. A shipyard might ask when an engine would arrive, what performance it would deliver, and how efficiently it would burn coal, then receive uncertainty on every point. Paying more could improve the effort without securing a promised schedule or result. The Royal Navy’s construction total therefore reflects the industrial risk involved in scaling a technology before mass standardisation.