The Navy Advisory Board, confronted with the possibility of hostile ironclads operating off the American coast, began planning for a pair of ships to protect that coast in 1884. Both had to fit within existing docks and had to have a shallow draft to enable them to use all the major American ports and bases. They had to have a minimum speed of and were to displace about . They were both optimized for end-on fire and had their gun turrets sponsoned out over the sides of the ship and echeloned to allow them to fire across the deck, much like the battleships "Riachuelo" and . The first ship, laid down for the then-traditional cruiser mission of battleship substitute on overseas deployment and armed with four guns, became . The other, armed with two guns, became "Texas", the first ship named in honor of that state to be built by the United States.