Although the Austrian Empire had clawed back a round, the British would not give up so easily. After losing control of the Suez Canal Company, they immediately changed their strategy.
Led by the Royal Academy of Sciences, the British put forward a new proposal.
Franz preferred to call it the "Suez Waterway Plan."
What was the Suez Canal Waterway Plan? It was a watered-down scheme concocted by the British, with a depth of only five meters and a surface width of twenty-five meters. According to the British, it could theoretically accommodate the largest ships in the world at the time.
Yet in reality, the historical Suez Canal had initially been eight meters deep and sixty meters wide, and its maximum safe navigation limit had only been 5,000 tons.
Old-fashioned sail-of-the-line ships could naturally pass through without issue, but the Austrian Empire's ironclads could not squeeze through such a little ditch.
Under the British proposal, the maximum safe navigation limit would likely be only 1,200 tons. Forget battleships—even large steam frigates would struggle to squeeze through.
Why was there such a vast gap between the theoretical navigation limit and the safe navigation limit? Naturally, it had been bought with countless tears and blood.
But the British did not acknowledge that at all. They recognized only formulas.
Ship displacement formula: Displacement (tons) = length × width × draft × block coefficient × seawater density
This had been proposed by the great British engineer William Froude, whose position in the global shipbuilding industry was unshakable.
Even when Franz personally entered the debate, he had come away with his nose rubbed in the dirt. He had even been branded ignorant and wildly fanciful.
Most Austrians, however, did not feel much about it. After all, this little negative trait of their emperor's was hardly anything