Italian cruiser Piemonte

Piemonte was a unique protected cruiser built for the Italian Regia Marina by the British shipyard Armstrong Whitworth, the first design that the newly hired naval architect Philip Watts produced for the firm. She was begun as a speculative venture, as an improved version of the cruiser Dogali, and Italy bought her on 30 July 1888 on condition that she carry six 6-inch quick-firing guns instead of the planned mixed battery. She was the first major warship armed entirely with medium-calibre quick-firing guns, a pattern that became standard for cruisers in the 1890s, and she was launched on 23 August 1888. Her triple-expansion steam engines drove her at 22.3 knots with forced draught, which made her the fastest cruiser in the world when she was completed in 1889. She served in East Asian waters from 1901 to 1904 and saw action in the Red Sea in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 to 1912, where at the Battle of Kunfuda Bay she and two destroyers sank four Ottoman gunboats. She remained in service until 1920, when she was scrapped.