Imperieuse and Warspite were ambitious long-range armoured cruisers built at Portsmouth and Chatham. Their intended station role shaped the design. A diamond main battery and a planned ten-gun secondary armament show how much fighting power the Admiralty tried to fit into each hull. Excess weight pushed much of the protective belt below the waterline, a problem shared with other early armoured cruisers. The ships still gave the Royal Navy practical experience of what a distant-station cruiser could carry and do.
Chapter · 1:35-3:05
What the Royal Navy learned from the Imperieuse class
The Imperieuse class shows how the Royal Navy learned from early armoured-cruiser experiments, including a belt that proved less useful once the ships sat deep in the water.