Editing Protected cruiser (section)

===Side armour abandonment===

The [[Royal Navy]] remained equivocal about which protection scheme to use for cruisers until 1887. The large {{sclass|Imperieuse|cruiser|4}}, begun in 1881 and finished in 1886, were built as armoured cruisers but were often referred to as protected cruisers due to the limited extent of their side armour – although what armour they had was admittedly very thick. Their primary role, as with the earlier ''Shannon'' and ''Nelsons'', was still to function as small battleships on foreign stations, countering enemy ''stationnaire ironclads'' rather than chasing down swift commerce-raiding corsairs. While they carried a very thick and heavy armoured belt of great power of resistance that extended over the middle {{convert|140|ft|m}} of the ship's {{convert|315|ft|m|adj=on}} length, the belt's upper edge was submerged at full load.<ref>Parkes, pp. 309–312</ref>

Britain built one more class of armoured cruiser with the {{sclass|Orlando|cruiser|4}}, begun in 1885 and completed in 1889. They were affected by a similar fault to the ''Imperieuse'' regarding their belt's submergence. In 1887 an assessment of the ''Orlando'' type judged them inferior to the protected cruisers<ref>Parkinson, p. 151</ref> and thereafter the Royal Navy built only protected cruisers, even for very large first-class cruiser designs, not returning to armoured cruisers until the introduction of new lighter and stronger armour technology (as seen in the {{sclass|Cressy|cruiser|4}}, laid down in 1898).

The sole major naval power to retain a preference for armoured cruisers into the 1890s was [[Russian Empire|Russia]]. The [[Imperial Russian Navy]] laid down four armoured cruisers and one protected cruiser during the late 1880s, all large ships with sails.<ref>Roberts, p. 109</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=May 2021}}

[[File:Protected cruiser schematic.png|thumb|left|220px|A schematic section of a protected cruiser illustrating the protection scheme. Red lines delineate the armoured deck and gun-shields, and grey areas represent the protective coal-bunkers. Note that the deck is thickest on the slopes, that the upper coal bunker is divided longitudinally to allow the outer layer of coal to be maintained while the inner bunker is emptied, and the watertight double-bottom.]]