The class comprised Evertsen and Zeeland The first coherent Dutch reaction to the appearance of screw driven warships was the plan 1852.

In May 1855 Smit van den Broecke presented an overall plan for the fleet at home and in the East Indies.

The heaviest ships of the new fleet would be 3 screw steam frigates of 400 hp, 50 guns and 500 men, to be stationed in the Netherlands.

The standard fighting warship for the East Indies would be a screw corvette of 250 hp, 12 30-pounders and 125 men, of which 12 would be built.

This led to screw frigates that were basically slightly longer versions of their sail only counterparts, the extra length being used for machinery and coal storage.

In 1847 he published an introduction to naval steam engineering (Dutch: Handleiding tot de kennis van het Scheeps-Stoomwerktuig).

In the final sentence of the introduction Huygens stated that it would describe the machinery for the Medusa, Amelia and Wassenaar.

[7] Therefore there can be little doubt that these two ships: the frigate Euryalus of 400 hp and the steam corvette Highflyer, can be considered to be the types of the 1855 program, at least with respect to machinery.

In 1855 Huygens published: Schroef-stoomschepen as a 4th appendix to Handleiding tot de kennis van het Scheeps-Stoomwerktuig.

In Schroefstoomschepen, published in the same year as the Plan 1855, Huygens compared the frigates of the 1855 program to the Imperieuse and Euryalus.

Huygens then declared that from a steam-mechanical point of view the ships of the plan were completely in line with contemporary technical standards.

Considering the difference between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in naval budget, engineering- and design capabilities this is no surprise.