Armored cruiser
Encyclopedia
Warship
A warship is a ship that is built and primarily intended for combat. Warships are usually built in a completely different way from merchant ships. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster and more maneuvrable than merchant ships...
of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like other types of cruiser
Cruiser
A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...
, the armored cruiser was a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
, and fast enough to outrun any battleships it encountered.
The first armored cruiser was HMS Shannon
HMS Shannon (1875)
The eighth HMS Shannon was the first British armoured cruiser. She was the last Royal Navy ironclad to be built which had a propeller that could be hoisted out of the water to reduce drag when she was under sail, and the first to have an armoured deck....
, launched in 1875. Like other early armored cruisers, she combined sail and steam propulsion. However, by the 1890s cruisers had abandoned sail propulsion and took on a modern appearance. The size of armored cruisers varied; the largest were as large and expensive as battleships.
The armored cruiser was distinguished from other types of cruiser by its belt armor
Belt armor
Belt armor is a layer of heavy metal armor plated on to or within outer hulls of warships, typically on battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers, and on aircraft carriers converted from those types of ships....
-thick iron (or later steel) plating on much of the hull to protect the ship from shellfire
Shell (projectile)
A shell is a payload-carrying projectile, which, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot . Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used...
from enemy guns. This protection method was widely used on battleships. However, for many decades it proved difficult to design an effective armored cruiser which combined an armored belt with the long range and high speed required to fulfill the cruiser's mission. In the 1880s and early 1890s, many navies preferred to build 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...
s instead. It was often possible to build cruisers which were faster and better all-round using this type of ship, which relied on a lighter armored deck
Deck (ship)
A deck is a permanent covering over a compartment or a hull of a ship. On a boat or ship, the primary deck is the horizontal structure which forms the 'roof' for the hull, which both strengthens the hull and serves as the primary working surface...
to protect the vital parts of the ship.
In 1908 the development of the armored cruiser culminated in the battlecruiser
Battlecruiser
Battlecruisers were large capital ships built in the first half of the 20th century. They were developed in the first decade of the century as the successor to the armoured cruiser, but their evolution was more closely linked to that of the dreadnought battleship...
. The new type of ship combined a radically more powerful armament similar to that of a dreadnought battleship
Dreadnought
The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts...
with fast steam turbine
Steam turbine
A steam turbine is a mechanical device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam, and converts it into rotary motion. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884....
engines, rapidly superseding the armored cruiser. At around the same time, the term 'light cruiser
Light cruiser
A light cruiser is a type of small- or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck...
' came into use for small cruisers with armored belts.
Armored cruisers were widely used in World War I, though by this stage they were generally regarded as second-class ships. Most of the surviving armored cruisers were scrapped under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty
Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was an attempt to cap and limit, and "prevent 'further' costly escalation" of the naval arms race that had begun after World War I between various International powers, each of which had significant naval fleets. The treaty was...
of 1922, which imposed limits on warships and defined a cruiser as a ship of 10,000 tons or less carrying guns of 8-inch caliber or less – rather smaller than many of the large armored cruisers. A handful survived in one form or another until World War II.
First armored cruisers of the 1870s
The armored cruiser was first developed in the 1870s as an attempt to combine the virtues of the armored ironclad warshipIronclad warship
An ironclad was a steam-propelled warship in the early part of the second half of the 19th century, protected by iron or steel armor plates. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. The first ironclad battleship, La Gloire,...
and the fast and long-ranged, but unarmored, cruisers of the time. The first ocean-going ironclads had been launched around 1860, and both French and British navies had built classes of relatively small ironclad warships, designed for long-range colonial service and using both sail and steam propulsion. Examples of this kind of "station ironclad" include the British Audacious and French Belliqueuse
French ironclad Belliqueuse
The French ironclad Belliqueuse was a wooden-hulled, armored corvette, built for the French Navy in the 1860s and designed as a cheap ironclad. She was the first French ironclad to sail around the world, which she did between December 1867 and May 1869...
classes. However, these ships were too slow to raid enemy commerce or hunt down enemy commerce raiders. These missions of commerce raiding and commerce protection were filled by frigates or corvettes, also powered by both sail and steam. Without the additional weight of armor, these ships could reach speeds of up to 16 or 17 knots. Examples of the most powerful armored cruisers of the 1860s include the British Inconstant
HMS Inconstant (1868)
HMS Inconstant was an iron screw frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 12 November 1868 and became a training ship in 1906, renamed Impregnable II. She became the Navy's torpedo school ship in January 1922 and was renamed Defiance IV, and Defiance II in December 1930, before being finally...
, the U.S. Navy's Wampanoag
USS Wampanoag (1864)
The first USS Wampanoag was a screw frigate in the United States Navy built during the American Civil War.-Development and design:Commerce raiding by CSS Alabama and CSS Florida, both built in English yards, reached a point in 1863 where continued peaceful relations between the United States and...
and the French Duquesne.
The Russian navy was the first to produce an armored warship intended for commerce raiding, with the General Admiral
Russian cruiser General-Admiral (1873)
General-Admiral was the lead ship of the armored cruisers built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the early 1870s. She is generally considered as the first true armored cruiser.-Design and description:...
, begun in 1870 and launched in 1873, often referred to as the first armored cruiser. She and her sister Gerzog Edinburgski
Russian cruiser Gerzog Edinburgski
The Gerzog Edinburgski was an armoured cruiser built for the Imperial Russian Navy. She was a sister ship of the Russian cruiser General-Admiral and was named after Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Edinburgh who married Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia.The ship was...
were a new threat to British commerce in the event of war. The British responded with Shannon
HMS Shannon (1875)
The eighth HMS Shannon was the first British armoured cruiser. She was the last Royal Navy ironclad to be built which had a propeller that could be hoisted out of the water to reduce drag when she was under sail, and the first to have an armoured deck....
, begun in 1873 and launched in 1875, and followed by two ships of the Nelson
Nelson class cruiser
The Nelson class cruiser was a class of two armoured cruisers launched in 1876 for the Royal Navy.They were also known as iron armoured frigates.- Ships:*Nelson - launched in 1876, converted to a training school in 1902, and sold in 1910....
class.
These early armored cruisers looked like cut-down versions of the ironclads of the time. Since sail propulsion was still vital for a long-ranged ship, the armored cruisers were required to carry a full sailing rig. As sailing ships required a high freeboard
Freeboard (nautical)
In sailing and boating, freeboardmeans the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, measured at the lowest point of sheer where water can enter the boat or ship...
and a large degree of stability, the use of armored turrets as used on monitors and some battleships was ruled out, because a turret was a very heavy weight high in the ship. Consequently armored cruisers retained a more traditional broadside arrangement. Their armor was distributed in a thick belt around the waterline along most of their length; the gun positions on deck were not necessarily armored at all. They were typically powered by double-expansion steam engines fed by boilers which generated steam at perhaps 60 or 70 psi pressure, which gave relatively poor efficiency and short range under steam. Their short steaming range could have been improved if less weight had been devoted to masts and rigging, but not to so far that they would ever reach the desired range under coal.
The British navy was never very happy with these early armored cruisers. They were too slow to deal with fast cruisers, Shannon making 12.25 knots and Nelson 14 knots, and not armored well enough to take on a first-class battleship. At this stage, it was still novel to distinguish between the concepts of armored cruiser and second-class battleship, and the designer of the British ships felt they fulfilled both roles.
A battle in May 1877 between the British unarmored cruiser Shah
HMS Shah (1873)
The first HMS Shah was a 19th century unarmoured iron hulled, wooden sheathed frigate of Britain's Royal Navy designed by Sir Edward Reed. She was originally to be named HMS Blonde but was renamed following the visit of the Shah of Persia in 1873....
and the Peruvian monitor
Monitor (warship)
A monitor was a class of relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s until the end of World War II, and saw their final use by the United States Navy during the Vietnam War.The monitors...
Huáscar demonstrated the need for more and better-protected cruisers. Shah and the smaller wooden corvette Amethyst hit Huáscar more than 50 times without causing significant damage. The Peruvian ship had an inexperienced crew unused to its cumbersome machinery, and managed to fire only six rounds, all of which missed. The engagement demonstrated the value of cruisers with armor protection.
Rise of the protected cruiser in the 1880s
During the 1870s the size and power of armor-piercing guns increased rapidly. This caused problems for the designers of armored ships of all kinds, both battleships and cruisers. Even if a ship was designed with enough armor to protect it against the current generation of guns, it was likely that within a few years new guns powerful enough to penetrate its armor would be developed.Consequently naval designers tried a novel method of armouring their ships. The vital parts of a ship - its engines, boilers, and magazines, together with enough of the hull to keep the ship stable in the event of damage - could be positioned underneath an armored deck just below the waterline. Since this deck would only be struck very obliquely by shells, it could be rather less thick and heavy than belt armor. While the sides of the ship would be entirely unarmoured, this protection scheme could be just as effective as an armored belt which would not stop shellfire. Cruisers with armored decks and no side armor became known as 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...
s, and superseded armored cruisers in the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s.
The first ship to make use of an armored deck was the armored cruiser Shannon. She relied principally on her vertical citadel armor for protection, with the armored deck covering a relatively short section of the hull forward from the armored citadel to the bows. However, by the end of the 1870s ships could be found with full-length armored decks and little or no side armor. The Italian Italia class
Italia class battleship
The Italia-class battleships were a class of two Italian battleships which served in the Regia Marina during the late 19th and early 20th centuries...
of very fast battleships had armored decks and guns but no side armor. The British used a full-length armored deck in their Comus class of corvettes started in 1878; however the Comus class were designed for colonial service and were only capable of 13 knots speed, not fast enough for commerce protection or fleet duties.
The breakthrough for the protected cruiser design came with the Chilean cruiser Esmeralda
Japanese cruiser Izumi
The was a 2nd class protected cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy, designed and built by the Newcastle upon Tyne-based Armstrong Whitworth shipyards at Elswick in the United Kingdom...
, designed and built by the British firm Armstrong, at their Elswick yard. Esmeralda had a high speed of 18 knots, and dispensed entirely with sails. Her armament of two 10in and six 6in guns appeared very powerful for her size. Her protection scheme, inspired by the Italia class, included a full-length protected deck up to 2in thick, and a cork-filled cofferdam
Cofferdam
A cofferdam is a temporary enclosure built within, or in pairs across, a body of water and constructed to allow the enclosed area to be pumped out, creating a dry work environment for the major work to proceed...
along her sides. Esmeralda set the tone for cruiser construction for the years to come, with "Elswick cruisers" on a similar design being constructed for Italy, China, Japan, Argentina, Austria and the United States.
The French navy adopted the protected cruiser wholeheartedly in the 1880s. The Jeune Ecole
Jeune Ecole
The Jeune École was a strategic naval concept developed during the 19th century. It advocated the use of small, powerfully equipped units to combat a larger battleship fleet, and commerce raiders capable of ending the trade of the rival nation...
school of thought, which proposed a navy composed of fast cruisers for commerce raiding and torpedo-boats for coast defense, was particularly influential in France. The first French protected cruiser was the Sfax, laid down in 1882, and followed by six classes of protected cruiser – and no armored cruisers until the Dupuy de Lôme, laid down in 1888 but not finished until 1895. Dupuy de Lôme was a revolutionary ship, being the first French armoured cruiser to dispose entirely of masts, and sheathed in steel armour. However, she and two other were not sufficiently seaworthy, and their armor could be penetrated by modern quick-firing gun
Quick-firing gun
A quick-firing gun is an artillery piece, typically a gun or howitzer, which has several characteristics which taken together mean the weapon can fire at a fast rate...
s. Thus from 1891–7 the French reverted to the construction of protected cruisers.
The British Royal Navy was equivocal about which protection scheme to use until 1887. The large Imperieuse class
Imperieuse class cruiser
The Imperieuse class cruiser was a class of two armoured cruisers launched between 1883 and 1884 for the Royal Navy.-History:In an 1886 magazine article, Sir Edward Reed complained that these ships did not deserve to be called "armoured", as they were not armoured at bow or stern, only along the...
, begun in 1881 and finished in 1886, were built as armored cruisers but were often referred to as protected cruisers. While they carried an armored belt some 10 in thick, the belt only covered a 140 ft of the 315 ft length of the ship, and was submerged below the waterline at full load. The real protection of the class came from the armored deck 4 in thick, and the arrangement of coal bunkers to prevent flooding. These ships were also the last armored cruisers to be designed with sails. However, on trials it became clear that the masts and sails did more harm than good; they were removed and replaced by a single military mast with machine guns.
The next class of small cruisers in the Royal Navy, the Mersey class, were protected cruisers, but the Royal Navy then returned to the armored cruiser with the Orlando class
Orlando class cruiser
The Orlando-class was a seven ship class of Royal Navy armoured cruisers completed between 1888 and 1889.- Building Programme :On 2 December 1884, the Secretary to the Admiralty stated, "The present Board have been gradually developing, and, as I would venture to say, in an effective manner, our...
, begun in 1885 and completed in 1889. However in 1887 a comparison of the Orlando type judged them inferior to the protected cruisers and the Royal Navy built exclusively protected cruisers, including some very large, fast ships like the 14,000-ton Powerful class
Powerful class cruiser
The Powerful class were first-class protected cruisers built for the British Royal Navy in the 1890s. There were two ships in the Powerful class, the lead ship Powerful and the Terrible.-Design:...
.
The only major naval power to retain a preference for armored cruisers during the 1880s was Russia. The Russian Navy laid down four armored cruisers and one protected cruiser during the decade, all being large ships with sails.
1890s: Armored cruisers in the pre-dreadnought era
The late 1890s saw the development of a new generation of armored cruisers, many of which were as large and expensive as the pre-dreadnought battleships of the time. These cruisers combined long range, high speed, and an armament approaching that of battleship with enough armour to protect them against the quick-firing gunQuick-firing gun
A quick-firing gun is an artillery piece, typically a gun or howitzer, which has several characteristics which taken together mean the weapon can fire at a fast rate...
s which were regarded as the most important weapons afloat at the time.
This was made possible by the introduction of Case-hardened
Case hardening
Case hardening or surface hardening is the process of hardening the surface of a metal, often a low carbon steel, by infusing elements into the material's surface, forming a thin layer of a harder alloy...
steel armor – first Harvey armor
Harvey armor
Harvey armor was a type of steel armor developed in the early 1890s in which the front surfaces of the plates were case hardened. The method for doing this was known as the Harvey process....
and then crucially Krupp armor - which meant it was finally possible to put a useful armor belt on a large cruiser The Jeanne d'Arc, laid down in 1896, displaced 11,000 tons, carried a mixed armament of 7.6in and 5.5in guns, and had a 6in belt of Harvey armor over her machinery spaces. In response, the British returned to armoured cruiser construction in 1898, with the Cressy class
Cressy class cruiser
The Cressy class cruiser was a class of six armoured cruisers launched between December 1899 and May 1901, for the Royal Navy.-Service:...
. The 6in belt of Krupp steel on these ships was expected to keep out armour-piercing shells from a 6in quick-firing gun at likely battle ranges. The weight of the belt armor was 2,500 tons, as compared to the 1,809 tons on the otherwise similar Diadem class
Diadem class cruiser
The Diadem class cruiser was a class of "First-Class" protected cruiser built for the Royal Navy during the 1890s that served in the First World War...
. Given that the armour on the Cressy class was actually very similar to that of the Canopus class
Canopus class battleship
The Canopus class was a group of six pre-dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy which were designed by Sir William White for use in the Far East and entered service between 1899 and 1902. The lead ship was which was followed by , , , and...
of battleships, this was readily accepted.
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
was the USS Maine
USS Maine (ACR-1)
USS Maine was the United States Navy's second commissioned pre-dreadnought battleship, although she was originally classified as an armored cruiser. She is best known for her catastrophic loss in Havana harbor. Maine had been sent to Havana, Cuba to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt...
, whose destruction in 1898 triggered the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
. Launched in 1889, she had 7 to 12 inches (178 to 305 mm) of armor around the sides ('belt armor'), and 1 to 4 inches (25 to 102 mm) on the decks. She was redesignated as a 'second class battleship' in 1894, an awkward compromise reflecting that she was slower than other cruisers, and weaker than the first-line battleships of the time.
New York
USS New York (ACR-2)
USS New York was a United States Navy armored cruiser. The fourth Navy ship to be named in honor of the state of New York, she was later renamed Saratoga and then Rochester ....
, launched in 1895, was less well protected than Maine, with 3 inches (76 mm) of belt armor, and 3 to 6 inches (76 to 152 mm) of deck armor. The Brooklyn was an improved version of the New York and Olympia
USS Olympia (C-6)
USS Olympia is a protected cruiser which saw service in the United States Navy from her commissioning in 1895 until 1922. This vessel became famous as the flagship of Commodore George Dewey at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The ship was decommissioned after...
designs.
Shortly after the Spanish-American War, the Navy built six Pennsylvania-class
Pennsylvania class cruiser
The Pennsylvania class of six armored cruisers were built by the United States Navy between 1901 and 1908. All six were later renamed for cities, to make the state names available for new battleships. All of them served during World War I, with the California being the only ship of its class to...
armored cruisers, almost immediately followed by four of the Tennessee class
Tennessee class cruiser
The Tennessee-class armored cruisers were four ships of the US Navy built between 1903–1906. The first pair were authorized in 1902 and the second in 1904...
. Collectively these ten ships were referred to as the 'big ten'.
The Battle of Tsushima
Battle of Tsushima
The Battle of Tsushima , commonly known as the “Sea of Japan Naval Battle” in Japan and the “Battle of Tsushima Strait”, was the major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War...
in 1905. Of the battle damage received by the Japanese, the armored cruiser Nisshin
Japanese cruiser Nisshin
, also transliterated as Nissin, was a armored cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy designed and built by Ansaldo in Genoa Italy, where the type was known as the . Designed as a cross between a battleship and a cruiser, but with a very small displacement, it had the ability to stand in the line...
received the second-most hits after the battleship Mikasa
Japanese battleship Mikasa
is a pre-Dreadnought battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, launched in Britain in 1900. She served as the flagship of Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō during the Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August 1904, and the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War. The ship is preserved as...
. Nisshin was hit 13 times, including six 12 inches (304.8 mm) hits. Nisshin managed to stay in line throughout the battle, validating the hopes of the designer: a cruiser able to stand in the line of battle. The performance of the Japanese armored cruisers during the Battle of Tsushima, and that of Nisshin in particular, likely led to a boom in the construction of armored cruisers in the world's navies.
Battlecruisers and light cruisers
The last armored cruisers were built around 1910 . At this time they were rapidly being outclassed by new technological developments such as the all big gun dreadnought battleshipDreadnought
The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts...
powered by steam turbine
Steam turbine
A steam turbine is a mechanical device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam, and converts it into rotary motion. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884....
engines, and the adoption of oil firing
Fuel oil
Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash...
meant that new construction could no longer rely on the protection afforded by coal bunkers. Armored cruisers were directly replaced in battle fleets by the larger, faster and better-armed battlecruiser
Battlecruiser
Battlecruisers were large capital ships built in the first half of the 20th century. They were developed in the first decade of the century as the successor to the armoured cruiser, but their evolution was more closely linked to that of the dreadnought battleship...
s. The large armored cruiser was therefore rendered obsolete, and only light cruiser
Light cruiser
A light cruiser is a type of small- or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck...
s were built from that point on. Remaining armored cruisers were used in patrolling and minor roles until the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Among the last armored cruisers built was the German SMS Blücher
SMS Blücher
SMS Blücher was the last armored cruiser to be built by the German Imperial Navy . She was designed to match what German intelligence incorrectly believed to be the specifications of the British s...
. Though it was perhaps the best of that type of ship, it was not up to par with the new battlecruisers. She was considered to be an intermediate stage toward the future German battlecruiser, being larger, faster and more heavily armed than all preceding armored cruisers, though smaller than subsequent battlecruisers. Blücher was completed in part because the British had misled the Germans on the Invincibles specifications, and she was too far advanced in her construction once the actual design of the British battlecruisers was known.
World War I
The Battle of CoronelBattle of Coronel
The First World War naval Battle of Coronel took place on 1 November 1914 off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel. German Kaiserliche Marine forces led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee met and defeated a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher...
, which had occurred shortly before the Battle of the Falkland Islands
Battle of the Falkland Islands
The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a British naval victory over the Imperial German Navy on 8 December 1914 during the First World War in the South Atlantic...
, was one of the last battles involving armored cruisers as the chief adversaries; all subsequent engagements were dominated by dreadnought-era battleships and battlecruisers. Unlike pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers still played an active role in World War I due to their high speeds, and were often used against dreadnought-type vessels, where they fared poorly.
For instance, at the Falkland Islands engagement, SMS Scharnhorst
SMS Scharnhorst
SMS Scharnhorst was an armored cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. She was the lead ship of her class, which also included her sister . Scharnhorst and her sister were enlarged versions of the preceding ; they were equipped with a greater...
and Gneisenau
SMS Gneisenau
SMS Gneisenau was an armored cruiser of the German navy, part of the two-ship . She was named after August von Gneisenau, a Prussian general of the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was laid down in 1904 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and completed in March 1908, at a cost of...
were sunk by the battlecruiser
Battlecruiser
Battlecruisers were large capital ships built in the first half of the 20th century. They were developed in the first decade of the century as the successor to the armoured cruiser, but their evolution was more closely linked to that of the dreadnought battleship...
s HMS Invincible
HMS Invincible (1907)
HMS Invincible was a battlecruiser of the British Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class of three, and the first battlecruiser to be built by any country in the world. She participated in the Battle of Heligoland Bight in a minor role as she was the oldest and slowest of the British battlecruisers...
and Inflexible
HMS Inflexible (1907)
HMS Inflexible was an of the British Royal Navy. She was built before World War I and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German battlecruiser and the light cruiser in the Mediterranean Sea when war broke out and she and her sister ship sank the German armoured...
. The German commander Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee
Maximilian von Spee
Vice Admiral Maximilian Reichsgraf von Spee was a German admiral. Although he was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the counts von Spee belonged to the prominent families of the Rhenish nobility. He joined the Kaiserliche Marine in 1878. In 1887–88 he commanded the Kamerun ports, in German West...
had already considered the Royal Australian Navy
Royal Australian Navy
The Royal Australian Navy is the naval branch of the Australian Defence Force. Following the Federation of Australia in 1901, the ships and resources of the separate colonial navies were integrated into a national force: the Commonwealth Naval Forces...
flagship HMAS Australia
HMAS Australia (1911)
HMAS Australia was one of three s built for the defence of the British Empire. Ordered by the Australian government in 1909, she was launched in 1911, and commissioned as flagship of the fledgling Royal Australian Navy in 1913...
superior to his force of armored and light cruisers. At the Falkland Islands encounter, while the German gunnery was mostly accurate, they failed to inflict serious damage on the British battlecruisers, which turned the tide of battle once they started hitting von Spee's ships.
During the Battle of Dogger Bank
Battle of Dogger Bank (1915)
The Battle of Dogger Bank was a naval battle fought near the Dogger Bank in the North Sea on 24 January 1915, during the First World War, between squadrons of the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet....
, the SMS Blücher
SMS Blücher
SMS Blücher was the last armored cruiser to be built by the German Imperial Navy . She was designed to match what German intelligence incorrectly believed to be the specifications of the British s...
was crippled by a shell from a British battlecruiser, which slowed Blücher to 17 knots. This forced Admiral Hipper
Franz von Hipper
Franz Ritter von Hipper was an admiral in the German Imperial Navy . Franz von Hipper joined the German Navy in 1881 as an officer cadet. He commanded several torpedo boat units and served as watch officer aboard several warships, as well as Kaiser Wilhelm II's yacht Hohenzollern...
to make the decision to sacrifice the armored cruiser (which was sunk with great loss of life) and let his more modern and valuable battlecruisers escape.
HMS Warrior
HMS Warrior (1905)
HMS Warrior was a Duke of Edinburgh-class armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser and light cruiser . Warrior was transferred to the Grand Fleet in...
, Defence
HMS Defence (1907)
HMS Defence was a armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. She was the last armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser and light cruiser...
and Black Prince
HMS Black Prince (1904)
HMS Black Prince was a armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. During the First World War she served in the Mediterranean before joining the Grand Fleet...
were lost at the Battle of Jutland
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...
when they inadvertently came into sight and range of the German Navy's
Kaiserliche Marine
The Imperial German Navy was the German Navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche Bundesmarine, which primarily had the mission of coastal defense. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded...
battle line, which included several battlecruisers and dreadnought battleships.
End of the armored cruiser
Washington Naval Treaty
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was an attempt to cap and limit, and "prevent 'further' costly escalation" of the naval arms race that had begun after World War I between various International powers, each of which had significant naval fleets. The treaty was...
of 1922 placed strict limits on the numbers of "capital ships" possessed by the navies of the great powers. A "capital ship" was defined as any vessel of over 10,000 tons displacement or with guns over 8in calibre, and several more armoured cruisers were decommissioned to comply with the terms of the treaty. The London Naval Treaty
London Naval Treaty
The London Naval Treaty was an agreement between the United Kingdom, the Empire of Japan, France, Italy and the United States, signed on April 22, 1930, which regulated submarine warfare and limited naval shipbuilding. Ratifications were exchanged in London on October 27, 1930, and the treaty went...
of 1930 introduced further limits on cruiser tonnage. Only a small number of armored cruisers survived these limitations, though a handful saw action in World War II.
One late-design armored cruiser still exists: Georgios Averof
Greek cruiser Georgios Averof
Georgios Averof is a Greek warship which served as the flagship of the Royal Hellenic Navy during most of the first half of the 20th Century...
, constructed in 1909–1911, is preserved as a museum in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
.