History
The first small steam powered cruisers were built for the British Royal Navy with HMS Mercury launched in 1878. Such second and third class protected cruisers evolved, gradually becoming faster, better armed and better protected. Germany took a lead in small cruiser design in the 1890s, building a class of fast cruisers copied by other nations. Such vessels were powered by coal-fired boilers and reciprocating steam engines and relied in part on the arrangement of coal bunkers for their protection. The adoption of oil-fired water-tube boilers and steam turbine engines meant that older small cruisers rapidly became obsolete. Furthermore, new construction could not rely on the protection of coal bunkers and would therefore have to adopt some form of side armoring. The British Bristol group of Town-class cruisers (1909) were a departure from previous designs; with turbine propulsion, mixed coal and oil firing and a 2 inch protective armoured belt as well as deck. Thus, by definition, they were armoured cruisers, despite displacing only 4,800 tons; the light armored cruiser had arrived. The first true modern light cruisers were the Arethusa class (1911) which had all oil-firing and used lightweight destroyer-type machinery to make 29 knots (54 km/h).
Read more about this topic: Light Cruiser
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—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)