SMS Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia ("Empress and Queen Maria Theresa") was an armored cruiser used by the imperial Austro-Hungarian Navy from 1895 to 1917; she was the first ship of that type built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The ship was a unique design, built by the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard in Trieste; she was laid down in July 1891, launched in April 1893, and completed in November 1894. Armed with a main battery of two guns and eight guns, the ship provided the basis for two subsequent armored cruiser designs for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. In 1898, Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia was deployed to the Caribbean to safeguard Austro-Hungarian interests during the Spanish–American War; she inadvertently arrived off Santiago de Cuba on the morning the Spanish squadron attempted to escape from the American blockade, and was nearly attacked herself. In 1900, she was sent to China to assist in the suppression of the Boxer Uprising, and remained in East Asian waters until 1902. She was heavily modernized between 1906 and 1910, and served in the 1st Cruiser Division after returning to the fleet. She was used first as a harbor guard ship and then as a barracks ship during World War I. After the end of the war, she was surrendered to Britain as a war prize and broken up for scrap in 1920. Design Starting in the mid-1880s, the new Austro-Hungarian Marinekommandant (Navy Commander), Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Maximilian Daublebsky von Sterneck, began a reorientation of Austro-Hungarian naval strategy. The fleet had until then been centered on large ironclad warships, but had been unable to continue building vessels of that type under the direction of the previous Marinekommandant, Vizeadmiral Friedrich von Pöck, owing to the refusal of the Imperial Council of Austria and the Diet of Hungary to grant sufficient naval budgets. Sterneck decided to adopt the concepts espoused by the French Jeune École (Young School), which suggested that flotillas of cheap torpedo boats could effectively defend a coastline against a fleet of expensive battleships. The torpedo boats would be supported by what Sterneck termed "torpedo-ram-cruisers", which would protect the torpedo boats from enemy cruisers. In his fleet plan for 1891, Sterneck proposed that the future Austro-Hungarian fleet would consist of four squadrons, each consisting of one torpedo-ram-cruiser, a smaller torpedo cruiser, a large torpedo boat and six smaller torpedo boats. The Navy had already secured parliamentary approval for