After the success of the Captain-class battleships, the Admiralty increased research and development funding for the Aerial branch. While the Captains had begun incorpo-rating aspects from the Cayley Design School, The Aerial Sovereign marked a more conservative “traditionalist” school. The role of flying ships was to be a mirror of their ‘wet’ counterparts. They were to accompany the fleet, and focus primarily on defeating other naval ships. Crews should be interchangeable between the flying and wet portions of the Navy. The Aerial Sovereign even had a weapons load that was largely identical to the Royal Sovereign class of con-ventional battleships.