Town-class cruiser (1936)

The Town class was a group of ten light cruisers built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s within the limits of the London Naval Treaty of 1930, which defined a light cruiser as one with a main armament of no more than 6.1 inch calibre. The ships were built in three sub-classes, Southampton, Gloucester and Edinburgh, each adding more weaponry, and all carried 6-inch guns in triple turrets, making up for the smaller calibre with numbers so that they matched heavy cruisers in effective power. The first ship was launched in 1936 and commissioned in 1937, two years before the war. Four were lost, Edinburgh, Gloucester, Manchester and Southampton, and the survivors served to the end of the 1950s, some in the Korean War. Harland and Wolff at Belfast built HMS Belfast, launched in March 1938, which survives as a museum ship on the River Thames in London.