British yards could plausibly have built the proposed fifteen-gun ship at roughly Queen Elizabeth dimensions, but naval budgets still constrained the experiment. The Liberal government publicly emphasized defence cuts and social spending more strongly than its actual changes justified. Building only one example created a technical problem: any failure might come from the design, the yard's workmanship, or the crew. A second ship supplied the comparison needed to rule out some of those causes. In an era without computerized simulation, paired construction and physical trials were a form of design validation rather than simple duplication or waste.
Notable Point · 32:30-35:16
Why one experimental battleship was not enough
Budget politics and the limits of paper design explain why two novel warships were needed to separate design faults from construction or crew problems.