July that year, amounted to a minor improvement over Kaiser Karl VI, with an extra pair of guns in the secondary battery. By April 1900, the design staff had begun to consider the possibility of increasing the caliber of the secondary guns to , though most senior officers preferred the faster-firing 15 cm guns. Two new proposals were submitted, both of which retained the 15 cm guns; the first kept the single-gun turret arrangement of the main battery that had been used for Kaiser Karl VI, but relocated the secondary guns to a central battery on the upper deck, just aft of the conning tower, rather than the casemates of the earlier vessel. The second proposal adopted a twin-gun turret for the main battery guns located forward and placed the secondary guns further aft. The construction of the Italian s, which were armed with and guns, prompted the Austro-Hungarians to reconsider their preference for the smaller gun. Another design, which incorporated the 19 cm gun, was then submitted; as a compromise, it retained four of the 15 cm guns, which were placed in casemates in the main deck abreast of the gun turrets. The two 24 cm guns were mounted in a twin turret forward, and a single 19 cm gun was carried in a turret aft. Four more 19 cm guns were mounted in casemates amidships. This submission was approved and became the cruiser Sankt Georg. The finalized design represented a significant improvement over Kaiser Karl VI; beside the much heavier gun armament, Sankt Georg was about heavier than her predecessor, faster, and better-protected through the use of Krupp armor rather than the Harvey steel used in the earlier ship. General characteristics and machinery Sankt Georg was long at the waterline and was long overall. She had a beam of and a draft of . She displaced as designed and up to at full load. Her crew numbered 630 officers and men. Sankt Georg was fitted with two pole masts for observation. Steering was controlled by a single rudder. The ship's propulsion system consisted of two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines that drove a pair of screw propellers. Steam was provided by twelve coal-fired Yarrow water-tube boilers that were trunked into three funnels on the centerline. The engines were rated at and produced a top speed of . On her full-power trials, she reached and . Coal storage amounted to