D'Estrées-class Cruiser
The ''D'Estrées'' class comprised two protected cruisers of the French Navy built in the late 1890s. The two ships were and , though a third was projected but was canceled before work began. They were ordered during a period of intense debate in the French fleet between officers who favored large armored cruisers and those who preferred smaller vessels more suited to long-distance cruising abroad. The ''D'Estrées''-class cruisers were intended to operate in the French colonial empire. The ships were armed with a main battery of two guns supported by four guns and they had a top speed of . ''D'Estrées'' and ''Infernet'' initially served in the Northern Squadron after entering service in the late 1890s, though they were quickly transferred elsewhere. ''D'Estrées'' went to the Atlantic station in 1902, while ''Infernet'' had been sent to French Madagascar by 1901. The latter ship then served a stint in the East Indies from 1903 to 1905, thereafter returning to France, where s ...
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Protected Cruiser
Protected cruisers, a type of naval cruiser of the late-19th century, gained their description because an armoured deck offered protection for vital machine-spaces from fragments caused by shells exploding above them. Protected cruisers resembled armored cruisers, which had in addition a belt of armour along the sides. Evolution From the late 1850s, navies began to replace their fleets of wooden ships-of-the-line with armoured ironclad warships. However, the frigates and sloops which performed the missions of scouting, commerce raiding and trade protection remained unarmoured. For several decades, it proved difficult to design a ship which had a meaningful amount of protective armour but at the same time maintained the speed and range required of a "cruising warship". The first attempts to do so, armored cruisers like , proved unsatisfactory, generally lacking enough speed for their cruiser role. During the 1870s the increasing power of armour-piercing shells made armou ...
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