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Post by revillag on Oct 16, 2019 4:46:32 GMT -6
August 1905 Dearest Cousin, Desperate times call for desperate measures. Although our battleships have broken the French blockade, unrest is rising. The French know this and very publicly have announced a peace offer. It is a farce as it is just a call to return to the state before the war. We have made our stance perfectly clear that we will not abandon Germany and they have made it clear that they will not settle for anything less than the French giving up all rights to Alsace-Lorraine. As far as I can tell, this was just a ploy sow division within our nation. Cousin Dimitri approached me with a radical plan. He knows of a communist agitator that is wanted by the French authorities for causing trouble. This man claims that if we can get him into France, he can stir up enough trouble to end the war. I doubt his grandiose claims, but cousin Dimitri believed that he can be valuable. I grant them use of one of our new destroyers to sneak them both into France. Our raiders have sunk seven French merchantmen for the loss of only three of our own. There was only one battle of note. We challenged the French blockaders and engaged in a battle with their ships. The SMS Wein was heavily damaged and will be spending the next few months in port. We lost one destroyer to no French losses so the French claimed victory, but they ended the blockade the next week, so I call it a win for the Kreigsmarine.
October 1905 Dearest Cousin, There are reports of widespread disturbances in France and rumors of mutinies in la Marine Nationale. I can not confirm these reports. I have not seen any lessening of activity by the la Marine Nationale against us. We have reorganized out trade protection ships now that all five of our new destroyers are finished their working up and can take their place in the fleet. Using heavy cruisers in trade protection seems to be working as we lost three merchantmen in September but only one so far this month with the cruisers on patrol. Unfortunately, our own raiders have been ineffective. I have given orders to them to move to new locations. SMS Salzburg has been delayed by at least a month as we have had to divert manpower to conduct repairs on our existing ships. During those repairs, an unexploded French shell was discovered and defused. The k.u.k. Marine-Akademie scientists have informed me that the French construct their shells differently from ours and believe that they can combine the two ideas and improve our shells. A section of armored plate originally destined for the SMS Salzburg was ordered to be sent to them so that they can test their ideas. Given the delay to SMS Salzburg, we can make a new section of plate before it is needed. There have been no fleet actions.
P.S. He did it! Von Tropp sunk the French battleship Colbert! I still don’t have details, but despite how he did it, this is a great day! Von Tropp is the hero of the hour. The press has made much of his success. He is a bit embarrassed by the whole thing, being the modest person he is. The way he tells it, he was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time, but I have spoken to his crew. He plotted the most likely rout that a French ship would take to bombard Ragusa and placed his U-boat there.
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Post by revillag on Oct 20, 2019 10:52:38 GMT -6
December 1905 Dearest Cousin, I have come to believe that this war will not be won or lost on the battlefield, but in the hearts of the populace. There have been widespread anti-war protests in France, Germany and here at home. We are asking a lot from our people. Although the press is quick to condemn the nature of the Dual Monarchy, it is equally quick to make it clear that they do not condemn the monarch! Uncle does not appear to take this internal threat seriously. I have written him asking to make some sort of pronouncement or otherwise engage the dissatisfied, but he has written me saying that it is nothing to worry about and it is just more of the same. While the domestic side of the war looks depressing, things are looking up on the military side. Losses of merchantmen have been about even with the French sinking six and our raiders sinking seven, but the German blockade is still in effect. The Germans have finally offered to sell us some technology. We were able to purchase an improved turret design which will make our next generation of turrets lighter. Cousin Dimitri also managed to steal a copy of the plans of for the French heavy cruiser under construction. It will have four 10” guns in two twin turrets, fourteen 6” and ten 3” guns in casemates, a 6” belt with a 2” deck. It will weigh 14,000 tons and have a design speed on 23 knots. This ship concerns me. It is classed as a cruiser, but there is a chance that it could out fight our battleships. Although we could build an equivalent ship, it would cost as much as a battleship, and we need battleships more than we need cruisers. P.S. The London Times have announced that the Royal Navy has laid down two new battleships. Although this is not unusual, the papers have been touting that these ships are truly revolutionary and will change the nature of naval warfare. Although details are scarce, I have a feeling that this might be important and have dispatched a man to London to look into it.
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Post by captainloggy on Dec 26, 2019 4:29:39 GMT -6
Has the Austro-Hungarian postal service gone bankrupt?
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Post by revillag on May 27, 2020 9:15:11 GMT -6
Sorry for the long delay, but now we are back! February 1906
Dearest Cousin, Losses have been heavy among the merchantmen of both sides. We have lost fourteen merchants in the last two months, our worst losses so far in the war, but we managed to sink ten French merchants. There has been talk of beginning a rationing system. I hope it will not come to that as it will only enflame the protestors. I do have some good news! Skoda Works has finally produced a working 12” battleship gun! My original intent was to order new battleships once we had this gun, but I am going to hold off. My agent in London has informed me that he has reliable information that the new battleships being build are around 200,000 tons and have three or more turrets. He has also informed me that the British shipyards have been offering to build battleships with 14” guns. A battleship carrying six 14” guns would out-class anything that we can build. The London Times had dubbed these ships “Dreadnaughts” as it claims that they need not fear any other ship built or building. I have spoken to the Marinetechnisches Kommittee about such a ship and they agree that it is plausible that the British have developed such a ship as they are currently working on a three turreted design. I have come to the conclusion that we will never be able to match other nations in terms of shear gun size, so I have concluded that our new ships must have more guns and be more survivable. I have therefore ordered the Marinetechnisches Kommittee to concentrate their activities on developing the three-centerline battleship as well as on torpedo protection. We will be able to afford only a few such ships, so they must be able to survive! I have also ordered the docks to once again be expanded. Ships will be only be getting bigger as we add more turrets. On the chart below, you can see that I have given the two new British battleships their own category as I believe that the British press may be right about their revolutionary nature. The “BC” category refers to a new ship that the Germans are building. It is some sort of a supper-cruiser. They claim that it is as fast as a cruiser, but with the guns of a battleship. In the words of the German officer that I spoke to, “It can outshoot anything it can’s outrun.” We know less about that ship than we do about the British one, so once again it gets its own classification until we know more about it. The Seven Great Navies in January 1906
| AH | GB | F | I | R | Gr | USA | BB |
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| (1) | | B | 9 (1) | 16 (5) | 9 | 13 (4) | 14 (1) | 13 (5) | 9 (2) | CA | 6 | 13 (1) | 12 (5) | 8 (1) | 6 (6) | 9 (2) | 15 (4) | CL | 6 | 18 | 2 | 4 (3) | 4 | 19 (1) | 14 | DD | 18 (5) | 35 | 24 | 19 | 15 (5) | 29 | 40 | KE | 5 | 2 | 12 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 (3) | AMC |
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| | SS | 4 (2) | 6 (2) | 6 (3) | 1 (1) | 8 (3) | 7 (2) | 9 (4) | Budgets | 136,550 | 389,300 | 260,550 | 185.300 | 213,200 | 235,600 | 232,250 | Docks | 17,000 | 22,000 | 22,000 | 21,000 | 21,000 | 20,000 | 21,500 |
Building includes rebuilding P.S. We caught an Italian spy in the Marinetechnisches Kommittee’s headquarters. We believe that he managed to steal some secrets before he was caught. Fortunately, we were able to keep it out of the press. We don’t need Italy joining in the war on the wrong side.
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Post by prophetinreverse on Jun 1, 2020 15:25:39 GMT -6
Let's see, Austro-Hungarian royal, a nephew to Kaiser Franz Joseph, and Franz Ferdinand is his cousin. I'm struggling to think of who it may be. It can't be another child of Archduke Karl Ludwig, because then Franz Ferdinand would be a brother, but that's the only branch of the family that had kids after Franz Joseph's son did that whole murder-suicide thing. Who is it?
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Post by revillag on Jun 2, 2020 13:08:12 GMT -6
Let's see, Austro-Hungarian royal, a nephew to Kaiser Franz Joseph, and Franz Ferdinand is his cousin. I'm struggling to think of who it may be. It can't be another child of Archduke Karl Ludwig, because then Franz Ferdinand would be a brother, but that's the only branch of the family that had kids after Franz Joseph's son did that whole murder-suicide thing. Who is it? He is fictional, as are a number of other characters. I knew almost nothing about Austro-Hungarian history, let alone their royal family, when I started this. I am researching as I write and trying to fit historical personalities and events into the narrative the game provides. I find myself creating a character and then digging back through Wikipedia looking for a historical figure that I can use, so please excuse any historical inaccuracies.
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Post by revillag on Jun 2, 2020 13:09:44 GMT -6
April 1906 Dearest Cousin, The new light cruiser Zanta finished her working up and was sent off as a raider. The merchant war is again a stalemate, with the French sinking eight of our merchant ships while we sink nine of theirs. We did learn through diplomatic channels that the la Marine Nationale has been using heavy cruisers for raiding when their heavy cruiser Jenne D’ Arc was interned in India. Under the rules of war, a neutral nation can only host a warship from a combatant for twenty-four hours. We don’t know the circumstances, but presumably the Jenne D’ Arc was having engine troubles and was unable to depart on schedule and therefore was interned and will ride out the remainder of the war at anchor. There were no major naval engagements, but we did send three of the new Splato destroyers on a raid of French shipping. They performed extremely well. They destroyed four French transports and a corvette while taking only light damage. The 3” gun definitely outperformed the 2” guns of the Tigers achieving good penetration and damage of the merchants, even sinking a small merchant ship by gunfire alone. I have ordered that the Tigers be taken in and have one of their torpedo tubes removed and the 2” guns replaced with 3” guns. They are still overweight by about three tons, but it is not worth the cost to replace the engines with lighter and more efficient ones. To answer your question, we are safe here, and although there has been some rioting, it is nothing like what is being reported in other cities. Cousin Dimitry is reporting that there is also heavy rioting in Paris. I fear that the loser of this war will be the side that has an internal revolt first! As fractured as we are, I am not sure that we can hold out much longer.
P.S. The London Times has announced that the Royal navy has laid down another one of these “Dread Naught” ships. I have learned that they plan to name the first one after the Roman god of war! Naming a ship after a pagan god is hardly fitting for a civilized nation and it shows their hubris in its full glory!
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Post by revillag on Jun 11, 2020 10:05:55 GMT -6
June 1906 Dearest Cousin, The trade war is turning against us. We lost five merchants and were unable to sink any ourselves. The French heavy cruisers accounted for most of our losses, so I ordered our cruisers on trade protection duty as a counter. This is a bit of a risk as that leaves us with only destroyers to escort and scout for our battle-line. I am not too concerned as la Marine Nationale has shown no indication of wanting to engage us in a major battle. This tactic has paid off as SMS Kaiser Karl VI intercepted a la Marine Nationale heavy cruiser attempting to attack one of our merchantmen. It was later in the day when they encountered each other and neither was much damaged in the battle, which ended as night fell, but the merchant escaped. It has not been reported in the papers, but there was a chance for peace. In an attempt to end the war, the French government approached us and the Kaiser through Swiss intermediaries during the run-up to the Second Geneva Convention. No agreement has been made, but I am told that negotiations, although stalled, have not ended. P.S. It seems that the world has gone mad! First Mount Vesuvius erupts, devastating Naples and then an earthquake devastates San Francisco, California. Is God trying to tell us something? I am grateful that nothing of the sort has occurred at home. With the unrest we have had, any perceived sigh of God’s displeasure may be enough to cause a revolution!
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Post by revillag on Jul 12, 2020 13:14:26 GMT -6
August 1906 Dearest Cousin, There have been widespread demonstrations calling for peace and an end to war in many nations, including our own. The slaughter in Alsace-Lorraine has so horrified the world that all of the nations have gathered in Geneva in an attempt to write rules that will eliminate war, or at least limit it. The Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field, or the Geneva Convention as it is more commonly known, war originally signed in 1864. At the time they had no way of comprehending the horror that is the modern battlefield. What good are rules against targeting medical personnel or priests when artillery can bombard without discrimination? I have no idea what will become of this meeting, but I don’t expect much. We have been received reports of mutinies in la Marine Nationale for a while now. I did not believe them, but now I think that they might be true. Over the last two months our raiders sunk 16 merchants! Our ships report that they did not encounter a single escort. The la Marine Nationale is not out of the fight as we lost four merchantmen, but the tide may have turned. The battle on land may have turned as well as the expected French summer offensive never materialized. The Gemeinsame Armee is once again asking for more funds to launch an attack of their own. This time I declined. Our “loan” we gave the army in 1905 has never been repaid, and I do not think it will be this time either. This ruffled some feathers in court. With the SMS Salzburg commissioning, and no new orders for new ships, they thought that we did not need the money. They have no idea how expensive a battleship is to operate and it took come convincing but out budget is safe for now. As for battleships, we are nearly ready to order a new one. Since Skoda Works has been unable to successfully build a gun larger than 12”, I have had the Marinetechnisches Kommittee working on other ways to increase the firepower of our battleships. As I mentioned in a previous letter, they experimented with wing turrets, but putting anything larger than a 10” gun in the turret made the ship unstable. the Marinetechnisches Kommittee has managed to design a ship with three turrets on the centerline. This necessitates splitting the engine rooms into two separate rooms with the trunk of the turret and its associated magazines in between. This will in turn cause the ship to be much longer than previous designs with the resulting increase in hull weight, but more importantly a significant increase in the length, and therefore weight, of the armored belt. It is unlikely we will be able to build a satisfactory ship of this design weighing less than 20,000 tons. We therefore have to wait until at least December when the dock expansion at the STT is completed. In the meantime, as two of the three battleships lost so far during the war have been lost to torpedoes, I have ordered all hands at the k.u.k. Marine-Akademie to work on a means of protecting this ship from torpedoes.
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Post by revillag on Jul 17, 2020 19:19:51 GMT -6
September 1906 Dearest Cousin, PEACE! The French government fell, and the new government was elected with the express purpose of ending the war. Peace came just in time as I am not sure how long our people would be willing to continue to support the war. The convention currently ongoing in Geneva served as the perfect forum and negotiations were quickly settled. France renounced all rights to Alsace-Lorraine and ceding the colony of Djibouti to Germany. I must admit I had to look up Djibouti on a map. It is valuable as a coaling station and little else in my opinion. The Kaiser also received reparations as did we. We were offered the opportunity to take over the French colony of Tunisia and a lesser amount of reparations. As you may recall, my original attitude upon taking this post was that we needed colonies to support the home nation. I have since changed that view. As disunited as the Dual Monarchy is, the last thing we need is another resentful ethnic group thrown into the mix. Almost as soon as the ink was dry on the treaty, both the Imperial Council and Hungarian Diet slashed the naval budget. Our current budget is now twenty percent less than it was when I started almost seven years ago! I see a trip to Wien and Budapest in my future. Although we have a significant reserve, that money was intended to fund a new battleship, once we could settle on an appropriate design. Now I hear that the politicians are using it as an excuse to justify the reduced budget. “We have ten battleships, why do we need more?”, their sycophants in the papers say. We need more because over half of our battleships shouldn’t have that title. Well, I plan to take away that excuse before I make my trip to the capitals. I have given orders that the five Kaisers be taken into STT and be given a refit. The money intended for the new battleship shall now be spent on turning these obsolete battle ships into functional heavy cruisers. They are to be given anti-torpedo bulges and new machinery to allow them to make 20 knots. For once I shall use our byzantine bureaucracy against itself as under the old Naval Law, any ship making 20 knots or more with less than 10” guns must be classified as a heavy cruiser. Why this law exists I do not know, but I shall use it to my advantage as now, when I visit the capitals, I can say that we no longer have any surplus and that we only have five battleships commissioned (even if the SMS Aprid does not deserve the title).
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Post by revillag on Aug 18, 2020 13:32:27 GMT -6
October 1906 Dearest Cousin, Our raiders come home to celebrations. These celebrations are somewhat bitter-sweet on my part as I am forced to send so many worthy officers and men on half-pay. The celebrations were crowned by detonating the mines of the harbor. It was quite a sight! After the celebrations, the minesweepers will go out and sweep the area for any mines that did not respond to the command to detonate. After they are done, they will be going into reserve. I have already given orders that the Tiger and Boa destroyers, which gave such tireless service protecting our trade, must also go into reserve. There is mixed news on the home front, the STT has announced that it is gearing up for the expected order of merchant ships as ships lost in the war are replaced and orders delayed by the war will be completed. They expect so much business that Herr Muller has taken out private loans to expand the shipyards by 1,000 tons capacity. On the other hand, the workers are striking for better pay and working conditions. Many of the newly reserved men from the fleet have applied there and I have heard that that has pushed the wages down. Although unrest has dropped since the end of the war, there is a noticeable undercurrent of resentment and unrest in the population. Many complain that we have spent many lives and much treasure so that Germany can get territory and they do not see that we have gained anything for it.
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Post by revillag on Aug 18, 2020 13:33:10 GMT -6
December 1906 Dearest Cousin, What to do about SMS Aprid? She is still on the books as a battleship even while her half-sisters are being rebuilt as cruisers. I had hoped to do the same for her, but it will not work. She was built with the intent that she would be a smaller and cheaper version of the Kaisers, but was never able to make her design speed of 18 knots and was one knot slower than the rest of the battle line. There simply isn’t enough room in her smaller hull to rebuild her to the new Kaiser standard. For now, she will have to be mothballed. Perhaps in the future new more efficient boiler designs may allow her to be rebuilt, but for now we can’t afford to keep her in her present state. In part as a negotiating tactic with the politicians in Wein and Budapest, and in part just to see what is available, I have sent envoys to all the major shipyards in the world to solicit bids for a new battleship. The bids generated were, of course, only preliminary design drawings, nothing that we could gain any technical details from, but they were illuminating none the less. The first to respond were the British yards. They all sent variations of the same ship. It had 13” guns with three centerline double turrets as well as double wing turrets on either side allowing a theoretical six guns forward and eight guns on the broadside, though I am not sure if the blast from the wing turrets would allow them to be fired forward. They also recommended seven 9” secondary guns in casemates and one torpedo tube port and one starboard and 8” inches of belt armor. The French design was similar but omitted the wing turrets and increased the guns from 13” to 14” and omitted the torpedo tubes but had 9” belt armor. The French also placed the secondary guns in double turrets. The Italian design was much like the French except that they added back in the torpedo tubes and reduced the secondary guns to compensate for the increased weight. The German design was quite a bit different. They called their design a battlecruiser and it have four double turrets with 12” guns laid out in a diamond pattern theoretically allowing six guns to fire in any direction. The Germans recommended fourteen, 4” guns in casemates for the secondary battery, but they also recommended sixteen 3” guns also in casemates for the tertiary battery. They also had 8.5” inches of armor. Unlike the battleships that had a design speed of 20 knots, the battlecruiser had a design speed of 24 knots. I asked if this matched the design that they were building for the Kaiserliche Marine but they refused to say. The Italian ship was unique in its layout. It had four twin 14” turrets, but the wing turrets were staggered so as to allow them to fire across the deck to the opposite side allowing a full eight gun broadside. I am not sure what the gun blast would do to the deck, but the Italian firm assured us that they had accounted for it I the plan. Like the Germans, the Italians recommended a mix of 4” and 3” guns for the secondary and the tertiary battery, and like the Germans they recommended 8.5” of belt armor. The American designs were so similar to the British that I shall not describe them. The Russian firms chose not to submit a design as they did not believe that the Tsar would allow us to build there due to the high tensions between our countries. I was gratified to know that none of the foreign proposed ships matched the underwater torpedo protection that has been proposed by the Marinetechnisches Kommittee. We appear to be ahead of the world in that area. With the new torpedo protection project completed, I have ordered a more balanced research budget going into the new year.
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Post by revillag on Aug 24, 2020 11:13:15 GMT -6
February 1907 Dearest Cousin, With the foreign designs in hand and the new dock expansion finished, it is time to design our next generation of battleship. Battleships have three main characteristics, Speed, Weight-of-shot and Protection. Our German allies are favoring speed in their new designs. Their argument is that their ships can out run anything that they can’t out fight, and this lets them chose the time and place of the battle. The British admiral Fisher has advocated this point for a long time. It is not clear yet if the Royal Navy is following his policy or if they have chosen another option. We know little of their new battleships except for their size. The Weight-of-shot for our ships is limited by the 12” guns that we can manufacture. Since we can’t increase the size of the shell, we must increase the number of shells fired. This would tend to favor the British designs of large wing turrets. I am not fond of that design as the turret on the unengaged side of the ship would be dead weight. The deciding factor, however, must be that the ship must survive. Due to the cost of these ships and our diminutive budget, we will not be able to afford to build many of these ships and therefore we can not afford to lose one in combat. That is why I was so adamant about perfecting the anti-torpedo protection before we designed the ship. After much debate we settled on a design of 20,000 tons, the largest the STT docks can accommodate. She will have three turrets, with the third roughly amidships. The guns will be, of course, 12”. She will also carry ten 6” guns in a secondary battery. Although this does leave her anti-torpedo boat armament on the light side, during the war, our own destroyers were able to protect our battleships from French torpedo craft, so I don’t see this as being a big deficit for the ship. She will have two torpedo tubes set to fire broadside. There was some discussion of mounting a second pair fore and aft, but ultimately it was decided that it would be only in unlikely scenarios where that arrangement would be useful, so it was decided that the weight was best used else ware. Perhaps I should have described the ship’s armor layout first, as that has driven all of the other factors. She will be the best protected battleship ever constructed. Most ships have the belt and deck armor thickest in the center and tapering and thinning as it reaches the ends. This means that the armor at the ends of a ship can not stop the shells of the main battery. We were successful in crossing the “T” of the French ships in more than one battle. This meant that out guns had the chance of penetrating the weaker armor at the ends of the ship and making their way into the machine rooms, thereby slowing the ship enough to force it to detach from the rest of the squadron. We suspect that this is what happened to the French battleship Solferind. To combat this, we have decided not to taper the belt or the deck. The new battleship shall have a 11” belt traveling the full length of the ship’s machinery spaces as well as 11” bulkheads on either end. We also chose not to taper the deck giving the ship a full 2” of deck armor above the belt. The central tower and turrets shall have 10” of armor and the turret roofs shall be as well armored as the deck with 2” of armor. Various considerations, not the least of them the weight involved, prevented the original plan of extending the armored build to cover the secondary battery’s casemates. Ultimately we decided on 4” of armor for the casemates. It will take four months and four and a half million krone to finalize the design, and an additional thirty months and sixty eight million krone to build. In order to help the budget, I have ordered that the two costal forts armed with 4” guns be decommissioned. I have also ordered two of our heavy cruisers to the reserve fleet. This has freed up enough money in the budget to order yet another expansion of the STT docks. Our battleships have doubled in size since I took office, and I can only see them getting bigger int eh future. The Seven Great Navies in January 1907
| AH | GB | F | I | R | G | USA | BB | (1) | (4) |
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| (1) | | B | 5 | 20 (1) | 9 | 14 (3) | 14 (1) | 17 (2) | 9 (2) | CA | 6 (5) | 14 | 14 (3) | 0 | 10 (2) | 11 | 15 (4) | CL | 6 | 18 (1) | 2 | 7 | 4 | 19 | 14 | DD | 23 | 35 | 24 | 19 | 20 (2) | 29 | 40 | KE | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 | AMC |
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| | SS | 5 | 8 | 9 (3) | 2 (2) | 10 (1) | 9 (1) | 13 (1) | Budgets | 88,050 | 192,400 | 137,000 | 114,900 | 131,650 | 161,250 | 164,250 | Docks | 20,000 | 24,000 | 24,000 | 23,000 | 23,000 | 22,000 | 23,500 |
Building includes rebuilding
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