Astraea-class cruiser

The Astraea class was a group of eight protected cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the 1890s under the Naval Defence Act of 1889, as an improved design of the earlier Apollo class. They displaced about a thousand tons more than the Apollos and had a full-length deck that gave higher freeboard amidships, with the main armament carried higher on the superstructure, which made them drier and more seaworthy ships, although critics thought the larger and costlier design offered little extra armament, speed or endurance. The eight ships were built at several navy dockyards, three at Devonport, two at Pembroke and one each at Sheerness, Portsmouth and Chatham Dockyard, where Forte was built. They served on foreign stations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and at the Cape of Good Hope, were obsolete by 1914, and ended the First World War mostly as training or depot ships before being sold and scrapped, apart from Hermione, which served as the Marine Society training ship Warspite until 1940.