Design & Development
The 10,000 ton treaty cruisers were the first type of warships built to internationally-agreed restrictions. These restrictions posed new engineering challenges and forced compromises upon designers in how to extract the best balance of speed, armament and protection. The United States Navy adopted a design with triple-gun turrets, allowing the hull to be shortened thus saving weight that could be put into protection. This approach however was at the expense of requiring increased installed power, as the speed of a ship is a function of the ratio of length to beam. The Royal Navy had a requirement for a vessel for colonial trade route defence, which required a good cruising range and speed and independent fighting power. This determined the need for a long hull and the use of four twin-gun turrets, with any remaining displacement invested in protection. The obstensible prime justification was defence against raiders on the Pacific and Indian ocean trade routes and looking good at the tea parties at Bombay, Tricomlee, Singapore,Hong Kong and Sydney but the greater perceived threat was the possibility of the Russian Navy or a reborn German Navy appearing in the cold North Atlantic and the disguised speed and fighting power of the lightly armoured County class cruisers, is Admiral Beatty's attempt to create a ship capable of running fast, through the cold North Atlantic.The need would be to be in position to hit and slow a Russian or Prussian large cruiser or battlecruiser, of 20,000 tons or more. They are in a sense the ultimate lightweight Jack Fisher battlecruiser, a two turret Glorious or Courageous, not having proved the answer for somewhat similar reasons to the later failure of the Deutchland class pocket battleships. Beatty, limited to just Hood, Rodney and Nelson in his modern battlefleet, saw the County class as a means of outrunning, outflanking and deep hitting anything short of a Battleship.
The design was conservative in nature, especially when compared to the contemporary Nelson class battleships built to satisfy the same treaty. The long (630 feet overall) hull was flush decked and with a high freeboard, and was strongly built. This afforded high initial stability, which contributed to the protection scheme. The machinery spaces followed the traditional layout of boiler rooms ahead of engine rooms, separated by an amidships magazine. The two boiler rooms exhausted into four uptakes, the central pair being combined to form a thickened central funnel. The three-funnel design was handsome, but somewhat impractical in terms of utilisation of internal space
As had been trialled in the wartime cruiser HMS Emerald whose completion had been delayed post-war, the Counties featured a new design of forward superstructure incorporating the navigating bridge, wheelhouse, signalling and compass platforms and gunnery director in a single block. This advance considerably rationalised the separate armoured conning tower and myriad of decks and platforms of older designs. Moving the fire-control equipment from the mast negated the need for a heavy tripod, and light pole masts sufficed for signalling yards and the spread of wireless antennae.
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