I'll throw my Pickelhaube into the ring now.

Prussian, now German naval history lacks the magnificence of the English and the vivaciousness of the French, and is something altogether unique.
By the end of the Kuturkrieg, the German admiralty hosted a wealth of coastal defense ships, commercial barges, and floating batteries. For Germany to become a great power on and within the earth, expansion seemed necessary. While land power dominance is the German hammer and tongs, it's new and growing navy is developing as a scalpel.
As with the railroad and steel manufacturing sectors, the German Empire was lucky in that its latecomer status afforded it an opportunity to acquire and utilize the most modern and most effective techniques for naval construction, rather than spending fifty or more years, as the English and the French have, on developing a modern maritime force.
Ambition drags a man to sea and passion brings him back to shore, per Admiral Nelson's estimations, and the Imperial Admiralty will never shy from admitting their admiration for the English penchant for control over the waves. While the world began digging through the layers of the Agarthan worlds, Berlin snatched up what now remained available for colonization on the surface in Sub-Saharan Africa, and justified its series of 'Navy Bills' to the taxpayer on the basis of necessity in defending the new acquisitions.
The ambition is power projection over the waves in the English fashion. The passion is the tectonic penchant for precision and quality.
Nowhere in the halls of the Kaiserliche Admiralty is it said that Germany will supercede Britain in naval dominance. However, building a fleet that might stretch the British to logistical overextension is entirely feasible. Thus informed the plans of Tirpitz, Capricious, and Monts of their ultimate goal: build a fleet that is 'just enough'. The industrial capacity and technological prowess was thus put to work on getting it all 'just right'.