Pöck faced chronic budgetary problems, owing in large part due to obstructionism from Hungarians and liberal Germans in parliament, the former viewing naval matters as an Austrian concern, and the latter opposed to naval expansion in light of the reduced threat from Italy in the 1870s. Additionally, since he was not involved in Tegetthoff's victory at the
Battle of Lissa in 1866, he lacked the personal prestige to command the respect of parliament. As a result, he had great difficulty securing the funding for new
ironclad warships during his tenure. He finally won approval for a new ship, , in 1875 but he could not convince parliament to allocate funds for a
sister ship he had planned to name
Erzherzog Karl. Confronted with parliamentary unwillingness to strengthen the fleet further, Pöck resorted to subterfuge to acquire the funds he needed. In 1875, he asked for a budget increase to "rebuild" the three s. In fact, Pöck sold the old vessels for scrap, reusing only the machinery, armor plate, and other fittings in three new ships, which were given the same names to obscure Pöck's sleight of hand. Throughout this period, the annual budget for the fleet continued to fall, from 9.5 million
florins in 1878 to 8 million in 1880. Pöck continued to push for another new ironclad, but by 1880 his efforts were only symbolic: in his proposed budget estimates for the year, he included the ship, but did not actually allocate any funds for it. Unable to increase the strength of the ironclad fleet, Pöck turned to less expensive means to defend Austria-Hungary's coastline, including development of
naval mines and self-propelled
torpedoes. He ordered the first
torpedo boat,
Torpedoboot I, from Britain in 1875, followed by five more from Britain and four more from domestic shipyards thereafter. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, he also ordered the four
torpedo cruisers , , , and . The commissioning of the very powerful Italian s in 1880 caused a naval scare in Austria-Hungary, prompting Kaiser
Franz Josef I ordered a joint army-navy commission to examine the problem. Pöck argued that the fleet would have to seek parity with the Italian fleet, which planned to build a fleet of sixteen battleships by 1888. Archduke Albrecht, then the inspector general of the army, argued that parity was impossible, and that the navy would have to focus instead on defensive weapons and tactics. In response, Pöck formulated a new fleet plan in 1881 that aimed simply to maintain the number of ironclads in service, replacing only the oldest four by 1888. Two would be replaced by new ships, and the other two would be "rebuilt" like the
Kaiser Maxes a decade earlier. The plan was accepted by parliament, but they delayed its completion to 1892, which would reduce the annual expenditure from 2.15 million florins to 1.7 million. The heaviest blow to Pöck's plans came in 1882, with the signing of the
Triple Alliance with Germany and Italy, which removed the threat of a hostile Italian fleet across the Adriatic. Thereafter, funding for the new warships authorized under the 1881 program was consistently trimmed in the annual budgets. This delayed construction of a replacement for the decrepit ironclad and the "reconstruction" of , which ultimately never took place. To combat reduced morale in the face of quantitative stagnation with the ironclad fleet, Pöck increased the number of ships sent abroad. Unarmored cruising ships were sent to ports around the world to represent Austria-Hungary throughout the 1870s and 1880s. He also sent ships to conduct scientific explorations in the
Arctic Ocean in 1872–1874 and 1882–1883. These cruises logged more time abroad for Austro-Hungarian warships than the rest of the history of the navy combined. He also began experimenting with the new torpedo boats and developing tactics to use them in battle. In September 1882, Pöck held major maneuvers to test methods to get the small craft close enough to attack larger, more powerful ironclads. Franz Josef, impressed by the exercises, promoted Pöck to full admiral. Exhausted from more than a decade of service as the
Marinekommandant and struggling with parliament, Pöck suffered a nervous breakdown in early November 1883. He was ordered to resign his commission, and his position was filled by Admiral
Maximilian Daublebsky von Sterneck on 13 November. Pöck died ten months later, on 25 September 1884 in
Feldhof near
Graz. Pöck's efforts eventually did bear fruit, though he did not live long enough to see it. "
Ersatz Salamander" (Replacement
Salamander) was eventually
laid down in January 1884 and commissioned in September 1889 as . And Sterneck used Pöck's budgetary subterfuge tactic to acquire another new ironclad, , by appropriating funds Pöck had secured to rebuild to construct the new vessel. ==Notes==