With the battleship class we have already dealt, both as regards its evolution and present-day pitch of perfection; but want of space has precluded any attempt to trace the evolution of the cruiser in the same way. It is therefore necessary, before going on to describe the cruisers of our modern navy, to glance, in the briefest possible manner, at their predecessors of days gone by. Perhaps we may take the viking skuta, or fast scouting vessel, as its first prototype, scouting being one of the most important duties of a cruiser. Possibly the galleys and balingers of mediæval times may be regarded as the skuta's successors, while the low-lying Tiger and other ships of her class in Tudor reigns may be considered as the immediate precursors of the famous frigates and corvettes which figured so largely and did such yeoman service in our eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century maritime campaigns. Our first frigates were the Satisfaction, Adventure, Nonsuch, Assurance, and Constant Warwick, all built in the year 1646; and from that time up to about 1870 a constant succession of ships of this useful type were added to the navy, the latest ones being, of course, steam frigates.

A frigate, according to an old work of 1771, was defined as "a light nimble ship built for the purposes of sailing swiftly. These vessels mount from twenty to thirty-eight guns, and are esteemed excellent cruisers." The name was derived from fregata, a Mediterranean vessel propelled both by sails and by oars. It is said the British navy was the first to adopt frigates for use in war, but the French, and afterwards the Americans, were generally successful in building the finest vessels of this class. These ships were full-rigged, with three masts, and carried all their principal guns in one battery on the main deck. The corvette may be regarded as a smaller frigate, but was not square-rigged on her mizzen-mast, and carried her main battery on her upper deck. This later type of cruiser outlasted the frigate by some years, and the last of them, such as the Opal and other corvettes of the "Jewel" class, were very handsome vessels, though by no means so formidable as the pole-rigged cruisers which took their place.

The frigates in the old French War were considered "the eyes and ears of the fleet". They sought out and reported the enemy, they attacked his cruisers and commerce and protected our own, and fully justified their name and the general reputation for smartness which they were accorded. The duties of our cruisers of to-day are of a very similar kind, although the invention of wireless telegraphy and the aeroplane has supplemented and to some extent superseded their scouting work.

As for what they have actually done, we have only to recollect the various incidents of the Great War as regards its aspects at sea. Acting in unison with those of France and Japan, they have swept German commerce and German cruisers from the face of the ocean, and so far, except for shore bombardments and submarine attacks, have been the only war-vessels engaged on either side. At the time of writing no battleships have as yet been in action against one another, for we may regard all those ships which have been reported in action at sea as cruisers, from the big battle-cruiser Lion down to the destroyers—and even, perhaps, our submarines, which are very useful scouts.

Cruisers proper in our navy are now officially classed in three main divisions—"battle-cruisers", "cruisers", and "light cruisers", though a very short time ago they were subdivided into "armoured cruisers", "first-class protected cruisers", "second-class protected cruisers", "third-class protected cruisers", "unarmoured cruisers", "lightly-armoured cruisers", and "scouts".

The battle-cruiser is a hybrid and, as this war has proved, a most useful war-vessel. She is not so heavily armed or armoured as a battleship of equivalent age, but has much greater speed. She is as big or bigger, and costs just about as much. Thus the Lion was launched in the same year as the battleship Orion—1910. Note the comparison below:—

Displacement.Guns.Speed.Thickest
Armour.		Cost.
Orion 22,300Ten 13·5 in. 21 knots 12 in. £1,900,000
Lion 26,350Eight 13·5 in. 28 knots 10 in. 2,100,000

Thus it will be seen that of these two contemporary ships the battle-cruiser is the bigger, cost £200,000 more, has two less big guns, 2 inches less protection, but steams at least 7 knots faster than the battleship. Indeed, it is hard to say whether she is or is not, on the whole, the more useful ship, even as a battleship. The Admiralty and naval constructors would seem to incline to this opinion, for, as we have seen in the latest battleship—the Queen Elizabeth—two guns have been sacrificed for the sake of 4 knots more speed than the Orion.

The cruiser-battleship or battle-cruiser, then, not only has almost precisely the same appearance as a battleship, though probably of rather greater length, but has special battle duties as well as cruiser duties. Thus, if working with battleships, it is her business to pursue an enemy's battle squadron in retreat, and, by bringing its rearmost ships to action, try to induce their consorts to stand by them till her own slower but more powerfully gunned consorts can come up and take a hand. As for her cruising duties, we have had conspicuous examples during the course of the war, both as to the right and wrong way of such ships' employment. The unexpected and opportune intervention of the Inflexible and Invincible in the Falkland Islands battle, whose mere appearance convinced von Spee that his "game was up"; and the way in which Sir David Beatty was "on the spot" and swooped down on the German North Sea raiders, are both excellent examples of the way these formidable fighting-cruisers should be used. If you want to see "how not to do it" you have only got to consider the misuse of the Goeben in the Mediterranean, where, after a useless bombardment of one or two not very important Algerian towns, she fled for shelter to the Dardanelles, instead of trying to break out into the Atlantic. It is claimed, of course, that, but for her appearance at Constantinople, Turkey would not have been drawn into the war on the side of Germany, but it is hard to believe that the long-pursued German intrigues in Turkey would have all gone for nothing without the arrival of the somewhat discredited Goeben. Nor was the use of battle-cruisers to bombard a few defenceless coast towns a sound method of strategy. As it was, they were within an ace of being lost—and for what result? Absolutely nil from a military point of view. The battle-cruiser has a great future before it, and it does not seem unlikely that, now that the enormous advantages of high speed have been so clearly demonstrated, it will altogether supersede the slower and heavier armed and armoured battleship proper.

After battle-cruisers we come to cruisers. Our typical modern cruisers may be taken to be represented by the "Defence" and "Achilles" classes, the latest of which dates from 1909. The former class have a displacement of 14,600 tons apiece, and carry four 9·2 and ten 7·5 guns. The latter are about 1000 tons smaller, and have an armament of six 9·2 and four 7·5 guns. Both types have 6- to 8-inch armour, and about 23 knots speed. They are exceedingly smart-looking vessels, with their numerous turrets or gun-houses, four funnels, and two lightly-rigged masts. They sit comparatively low in the water, and present an appearance of both speed and war-like efficiency.