Classification is an evolutionary problem as well as a naming problem. Treaty limits constrained cruiser development without stopping designers from extracting more power from the category. Destroyers offer the clearest comparison: modern hulls of 10,000 to 16,000 tons descend from torpedo boats of only dozens or hundreds of tons in the 1890s. That lineage explains why an inherited label can remain in use even after a ship's scale and missions have changed radically.
Notable Point · 13:39-14:50
Warship categories grow beyond their original scale
Treaty rules and continuous technical growth carried cruisers and destroyers far beyond the scale of their nineteenth-century predecessors.