Brassey’s and the large-light-cruiser lens

The 1923 Brassey’s Naval Annual describes Hawkins as a large light cruiser, a term that makes the Counties’ lineage more coherent than an armoured-cruiser ancestry. Their clean hull and funnel arrangement also departed from the visual priorities of older armoured cruisers. The aesthetic point relates to function because the Royal Navy employed the ships differently from navies that wanted eight-inch cruisers near a battle line. Contemporary terminology therefore reopens a later, apparently settled classification.