Judging the ships solely by a submarine threat barely imaginable when they were designed turns hindsight into a false requirement. The Admiralty could reasonably have withdrawn the cruisers whenever weather removed their destroyer screen, but that lesson became clear only after operational experience exposed the danger. Blaming Arthur Christian also obscures the fact that he followed central orders, challenged them where he could, and left an experienced captain in command. Better subdivision or internal torpedo protection might have improved survival, although two very short-range hits could overwhelm far newer protective schemes as well. The immediate requirement was a destroyer escort able to deter or attack submarines. The wider fleet lesson is that a simple high-low mix of battlecruisers and light cruisers left too little modern capacity in the medium tier for demanding non-capital-ship missions.
Notable Point · 1:27:38-1:31:23
The Cressy disaster, hindsight, and the escort lesson
The disaster exposed an escort and force-structure problem, but it did not prove that an 1890s cruiser should have been designed around an unproven submarine threat.