Sending Cressy-class ships to Christopher Cradock would not have fixed the British position at Coronel. Their low six-inch casemates would have been badly restricted in the rough sea, and their practical sustained speed of about 19.75 knots was below the advertised figure. HMS Defence, which Cradock had been promised, combined four 9.2-inch guns with a substantial 7.5-inch battery in a much more suitable twentieth-century design. The Duke of Edinburgh, Warrior, and Minotaur classes represent the medium armoured cruisers that could have changed the tactical balance. Continuing to order such ships might also have retired older Cressys before the war. Coronel is therefore a force-structure lesson: numbers alone were insufficient when the available cruisers had the wrong speed, gun layout, and generation of design.
Notable Point · 1:31:40-1:34:12
Why a Cressy would not have solved Coronel
Low casemate guns and limited practical speed made Cressy the wrong reinforcement for Cradock, unlike the later medium armoured cruisers Britain had stopped building.