Flowchart might go that way:
Do we plan or want to be at war with the UK? Y/N
N -> Okay, let's not ruin ourselves building a Navy, they'll keep the sea lanes open and they will chase off the French or the Russians if they interfere with our trade. We need a few cutters for Coast Guard duty, some colliers for our sparse colonies and a few gunboats to make whichever poor saps we want toe the imperial line. We'll suffer in the Baltic if the Russians are at war with us but let's see them try and destroy our trade in iron with Sweden. The British'll sink them to teach them manners. And Narvik is open anyway. As for the French, it's not like we were planning on landing troops in Algeria or Provence and troops invading Lorraine can't have maritime support. Could you imagine if a moron devised a plan that depended entirely on going through Belgium? With them needing to commit to their two-coast Navy (thank their geography for that) to maintain their colonies, they'll never catch up to us on land with their low population and financial needs elsewhere. Route our maritime fleet through north of Scotland.
Y -> This is gonna get tricky. Do we care if they know? Y/N
Y -> They'll pick up on it the minute we lay down some battleships. Indeed their public already thinks that. We have to run a concerted campaign of ostensibly not wanting to be at war with them and cultivate their ruling class to trick them (hey, our shiny liberal Emperor might come in handy!) while finding a way to replace the guano imports... and the copper, probably the Swedish iron... some agricultural produce too. And on the downlow. Then we'll have to hanker down and defeat their allies. The UK are notorious for giving up when their allies are beaten on land in spectacular fashion and not bothering for the next twenty years. Oh, what are our war goals in all this?
N -> Well, they'll know. Can we challenge them significantly without any significant maritime tradition to build upon? Maybe, we'll eventually have a bigger industrial base than them. But they'd have to be stretched out to the limit, so that assumes they're facing other powerful navies as well as ours... meaning the French? ok, not happening. The Americans? ahahah, no. Italians, Austrians and Ottomans? They'd still be penned up in the Med. Bugger. The Russians? But then who are we fighting and for what?
What benefit was there, really, other than to be able to say when it came to navies, you had a big one? I'll grant you in times of fierce nationalism such as these, it was absolutely part of the calculus but still...