This was a fiction, however; the head of the Austro-Hungarian Navy could not secure funding for new ships, but reconstruction projects were uncontroversial, so he "rebuilt" the three earlier Kaiser Max-class ironclads.

Only the engines and parts of the armor plate were reused in the new Kaiser Max, which was laid down in February 1874, launched in December 1875, and commissioned in October 1876.

The ship was ostensibly the same vessel that had been laid down in 1861, as the Austro-Hungarian parliament had approved a so-called reconstruction program of that Kaiser Max.

The head of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Vice Admiral Friedrich von Pöck, had resorted to subterfuge to circumvent parliamentary hostility to new ironclad construction; he requested funds to modernize the earlier vessel, but in fact, he had that vessel broken up, with only the machinery, parts of the armor plate, and other miscellaneous equipment being incorporated into the new ship.

[5] In June and July 1889, Kaiser Max participated in fleet training exercises, which also included the ironclads Custoza, Erzherzog Albrecht, Tegetthoff, Prinz Eugen, and Don Juan d'Austria.

[6] During the 1893 fleet maneuvers, Kaiser Max was mobilized to train alongside the ironclads Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf, Kronprinzessin Erzherzogin Stephanie, Prinz Eugen, and Don Juan d'Austria, among other vessels.

[7] A new construction program in the late 1890s and early 1900s required the Austro-Hungarian Navy to discard old, obsolete vessels to reduce annual budgets.

She was converted into a barracks ship and in 1909, assigned to Cattaro Bay to serve the Arsenal Teodo, where she remained through World War I.

She was renamed Tivat, according to Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships later became Neretva, serving through 1941; her ultimate fate after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 is unknown.