cruiserlarge surface warship built for high speed and great cruising radius, smaller than a battleship but larger than a destroyercapable of not only defending its own fleet and coastlines but also threatening those of the enemy.

The word cruiser was applied originally to frigates of the sailing era, which, being smaller and faster than ships of the line, scouted cruised the seas scouting for enemy fleets and cruised the seas hunting enemy convoys. As the designation for a specific type of warship, cruiser did not become current until about 1880, when navies had settled on iron-hulled ships powered either by a combination of sail and steam or solely by steam. Cruisers became the frigates of the steam era. By about 1900, cruisers were of two principal kinds; : protected cruisers had steel armour plating only on their decks, while armoured cruisers also had armour extending down the sides of the hull. Though smaller than battleships, cruisers were powerful warships because of their great speed and relatively big guns.

In the decades before World War I, armoured cruisers were eclipsed by cruisers as large as battleships (displacing up to 20,000 tons or more) and carrying dreadnought-style armament of big guns of uniform calibre. These so-called battle cruisers achieved greater speed—about 25 25–30 knots—by limiting the thickness of their armour. At the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, the advantages of speed and big guns were demonstrated when two British battle cruisers destroyed two German armoured cruisers. But the weakness of light armour became apparent at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, when Britain lost three battle cruisers to heavy German battleships.

The Washington Treaty of 1922 limited cruisers to 10,000 tons, but many nations states violated the treaty even before , and it was abandoned shortly before World War II. By then , cruisers had been deprived of their scouting functions by naval aircraft, and submarines had largely usurped their role as convoy raiders. During the war they served mostly as floating batteries for amphibious assaults and as part of air-defense screens protecting aircraft-carrier task forces. For this latter role, special antiaircraft cruisers were built, carrying as main armament about a dozen rapid-fire guns of only four to five inches.

After the war the high cost of building and maintaining large battle fleets led to the abandonment of cruisers by all navies except those of the United States and Soviet Union. In both U.S. and Soviet cruisers, big-gun armament was replaced by guided missiles. U.S. cruisers , which carried carrying surface-to-air missiles , and sophisticated radar systems became the first line in a fleet’s air-defense screen. Meanwhile, while some Soviet cruisers carried were armed with long-range antiship missiles and retained , thus retaining some of the ship-killing functions of earlier cruisers. The introduction of cruise missiles restored some of the offensive firepower of cruisers over coastlines and extended it into areas far inland.

Another important postwar development in U.S. and Soviet cruisers was nuclear propulsion. In the 1960s and ’70s the United States commissioned a small number of nuclear-powered cruisers to accompany its aircraft carriers, but the last of these expensive ships was decommissioned by the end of the century. Russia carried on into the 21st century with a few large nuclear-powered cruisers.

A modern guided-missile cruiser typically is powered by gas turbines. It has a length of about 180 metres (about 600 feet (about 180 m), a displacement of 7,000 to 10,000 tons, a top speed of over 30 knots, and a crew of about 500. The introduction of cruise missiles has restored some of the offensive power of U.S. cruisers.

Another important postwar development has been nuclear propulsion, which has given some cruisers virtually unlimited range.