At 7,375 long tons, the cruisers carried triple-expansion machinery designed for 22.5 knots and an extraordinary claimed range of 25,520 nautical miles at ten knots. Trial speeds could exceed the design figure, but performance varied with coal quality and the quoted endurance apparently assumed more coal than the ships normally carried. Columbia's fast 1895 Atlantic crossing advertised American industrial capability and announced that the United States could field a high-performance cruiser. Yet the liner Fuerst Bismarck had already completed the route more than thirteen hours faster, casting doubt on the ship's core pursuit mission.
Chapter · 24:24-29:06
Columbia's spectacular range and ambiguous speed record
The class paired very high power and theoretical endurance with trial results that exposed the difference between headline performance and its actual liner-hunting mission.