Cruiser

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US Navy's Virginia-class cruiser USS Arkansas. The Virginia class was the last class of nuclear-powered cruisers in the US.
Russian Slava-class cruiser Marshal Ustinov

A cruiser is a type of

search-and-destroy to ocean escort to sea denial
.

The term "cruiser", which has been in use for several hundred years, has changed its meaning over time. During the Age of Sail, the term cruising referred to certain kinds of missions—independent scouting, commerce protection, or raiding—usually fulfilled by frigates or sloops-of-war, which functioned as the cruising warships of a fleet.

In the middle of the 19th century, cruiser came to be a classification of the ships intended for cruising distant waters, for

dreadnought battleship before World War I, the armored cruiser evolved into a vessel of similar scale known as the battlecruiser. The very large battlecruisers of the World War I era that succeeded armored cruisers were now classified, along with dreadnought battleships, as capital ships
.

By the early 20th century, after World War I, the direct successors to protected cruisers could be placed on a consistent scale of warship size, smaller than a battleship but larger than a destroyer. In 1922, the Washington Naval Treaty placed a formal limit on these cruisers, which were defined as warships of up to 10,000 tons displacement carrying guns no larger than 8 inches in calibre; whilst the 1930 London Naval Treaty created a divide of two cruiser types, heavy cruisers having 6.1 inches to 8 inch guns, while those with guns of 6.1 inches or less were light cruisers. Each type were limited in total and individual tonnage which shaped cruiser design until the collapse of the treaty system just prior to the start of World War II. Some variations on the Treaty cruiser design included the German Deutschland-class "pocket battleships", which had heavier armament at the expense of speed compared to standard heavy cruisers, and the American Alaska class, which was a scaled-up heavy cruiser design designated as a "cruiser-killer".

In the later 20th century, the obsolescence of the battleship left the cruiser as the largest and most powerful

short-range air defense role. By the end of the Cold War the line between cruisers and destroyers had blurred, with the Ticonderoga-class cruiser using the hull of the Spruance-class
destroyer but receiving the cruiser designation due to their enhanced mission and combat systems.

As of 2023[update], only three countries operate active duty vessels formally classed as cruisers: the

was the last gun cruiser in service, serving with the Peruvian Navy until 2017.

Nevertheless, other classes in addition to the above may be considered cruisers due to differing classification systems. The US/NATO system includes the Type 055 from China[6] and the Kirov and Slava from Russia.[7] International Institute for Strategic Studies' "The Military Balance" defines a cruiser as a surface combatant displacing at least 9750 tonnes; with respect to vessels in service as of the early 2020s it includes the Type 055, the Sejong the Great from South Korea, the Atago and Maya from Japan and the Ticonderoga and Zumwalt from the US.[8]

Early history

The term "cruiser" or "cruizer"[9] was first commonly used in the 17th century to refer to an independent warship. "Cruiser" meant the purpose or mission of a ship, rather than a category of vessel. However, the term was nonetheless used to mean a smaller, faster warship suitable for such a role. In the 17th century, the ship of the line was generally too large, inflexible, and expensive to be dispatched on long-range missions (for instance, to the Americas), and too strategically important to be put at risk of fouling and foundering by continual patrol duties.[10]

The

Dutch navy was noted for its cruisers in the 17th century, while the Royal Navy—and later French and Spanish navies—subsequently caught up in terms of their numbers and deployment. The British Cruiser and Convoy Acts were an attempt by mercantile interests in Parliament to focus the Navy on commerce defence and raiding with cruisers, rather than the more scarce and expensive ships of the line.[11]
During the 18th century the frigate became the preeminent type of cruiser. A frigate was a small, fast, long range, lightly armed (single gun-deck) ship used for scouting, carrying dispatches, and disrupting enemy trade. The other principal type of cruiser was the sloop, but many other miscellaneous types of ship were used as well.

Steam cruisers

During the 19th century, navies began to use steam power for their fleets. The 1840s saw the construction of experimental steam-powered frigates and sloops. By the middle of the 1850s, the British and U.S. Navies were both building steam frigates with very long hulls and a heavy gun armament, for instance USS Merrimack or Mersey.[12]

The 1860s saw the introduction of the

ironclad. The first ironclads were frigates, in the sense of having one gun deck; however, they were also clearly the most powerful ships in the navy, and were principally to serve in the line of battle. In spite of their great speed, they would have been wasted in a cruising role.[13]

The French constructed a number of smaller ironclads for overseas cruising duties, starting with the Belliqueuse, commissioned 1865. These "station ironclads" were the beginning of the development of the armored cruisers, a type of ironclad specifically for the traditional cruiser missions of fast, independent raiding and patrol.

Marco Polo, the Royal Italian Navy's first armored cruiser

The first true armored cruiser was the Russian General-Admiral, completed in 1874, and followed by the British Shannon a few years later.

Until the 1890s armored cruisers were still built with masts for a full sailing rig, to enable them to operate far from friendly coaling stations.[14]

Unarmored cruising warships, built out of wood, iron, steel or a combination of those materials, remained popular until towards the end of the 19th century. The ironclad's armor often meant that they were limited to short range under steam, and many ironclads were unsuited to long-range missions or for work in distant colonies. The unarmored cruiser—often a

screw frigate—could continue in this role. Even though mid- to late-19th century cruisers typically carried up-to-date guns firing explosive shells, they were unable to face ironclads in combat. This was evidenced by the clash between HMS Shah, a modern British cruiser, and the Peruvian monitor Huáscar. Even though the Peruvian vessel was obsolete by the time of the encounter, it stood up well to roughly 50 hits from British shells.[citation needed
]

Steel cruisers