Armored cruiser

The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a pre-dreadnought battleship and fast enough to outrun any battleship it encountered. For many decades, naval technology had not advanced far enough for designers to produce a cruiser that combined an armored belt with the long-range and high speed required to fulfil its mission. For this reason, beginning in the 1880s and 1890s, many navies preferred to build protected cruisers, which only relied on a lightly armored deck to protect the vital parts of the ship. By the late 1880s, the development of modern rapid-fire breech-loading guns and high-explosive shells made the reintroduction of side armor a necessity. The invention of case-hardened armor in the mid-1890s offered effective protection with less weight than previously. Varying in size, the armored cruiser was distinguished from other types of cruiser by its belt armor—thick iron (or later steel) plating on much of the hull to protect the ship from shellfire much like that on battleships. The first armored cruiser, General-Admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy was launched in 1873 and combined sail and steam propulsion. By the 1890s, cruisers had abandoned sail and took on a modern appearance. In 1908, the armored cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, which, with armament equivalent to that of a dreadnought battleship and speed equivalent to that of a cruiser, was faster and more powerful than an armored cruiser. At around the same time there was a successor to the protected cruiser, the "light cruiser" which described small cruisers with armored belts. Although they were now considered second-rate ships, armored cruisers were still much used in World War I...