Naval Defence Act 1889

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The Naval Defence Act of 1889 was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which established the Two-Power Standard for the Royal Navy. It was passed by the government of Lord Salisbury and facilitated the spending of an extra £20 million on the Royal Navy over the following four years. This was the biggest ever peacetime expansion of the navy : ten new battleships, thirty-eight new cruisers, eighteen new torpedo boats and four new fast gunboats. Traditionally (since the Battle of Trafalgar) Britain had possessed a navy one-third larger than their nearest naval rival but now the Royal Navy was set to the Two-Power Standard; that it would be maintained "to a standard of strength equivalent to that of the combined forces of the next two biggest navies in the world".^[1] This was aimed at France and Russia.