Nueve de Julio was a protected cruiser

Protected cruiser

The protected cruiser is a type of naval cruiser of the late 19th century, so known because its armoured deck offered protection for vital machine spaces from shrapnel caused by exploding shells above...

 of the Argentine Navy

Argentine Navy

The Navy of the Argentine Republic or Armada of the Argentine Republic is the navy of Argentina. It is one of the three branches of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, together with the Army and the Air Force....

. The Nueve de Julio was designed by Philip Watts and was one of a series of fast protected cruisers built by Armstrong (Elswick, England) for export. The ship was a second-class protected cruiser with quick-firing guns, in contrast to Argentina’s previous “Elswick” ship the Veinticinco de Mayo which on a similar size hull mounted 8.2in main guns. The Nueve de Julio was therefore similar to its predecessor Piemonte built for Italy, the first cruiser with an all-quick firing armament, and the following Elswick cruiser Yoshino

Japanese cruiser Yoshino

was a 2nd class protected cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy, designed and built by the Armstrong Whitworth shipyards in Elswick, in Great Britain. Yoshino is sometimes regarded as a sister ship to the , although the two vessels are of different classes...

 built for Japan, which was the fastest ship in the First Sino-Japanese War

First Sino-Japanese War

The First Sino-Japanese War was fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, primarily over control of Korea...

and performed well in action. The Nueve de Julio had a double bottom except in the boiler and engine rooms (where the hull was not deep enough) and the protective deck had a raised glacis over the engines. Originally the torpedo tubes would have been 14 in., the substitution of the larger type delayed construction. Argentina and its rival Chile purchased a series of cruisers in a local naval arms race from the 1890s to 1902, in which Armstrong of Elswick sold ships to both sides, and Brazil too. Fortunately, there was never a conflict (geography would have made it difficult for either side to sustain a naval campaign along the opposing coastline beyond the tip of South America, or for that matter launch a land war across the mountains) and the warships were eventually retired and scrapped (the Nueve de Julio in 1930).