Protected cruiser in the context of "Armored cruiser"

Elli (Greek: Κ/Δ Έλλη) was a 2,600 ton Greek protected cruiser (Greek: Εύδρομο Καταδρομικό) named for a naval battle of the First Balkan War in which Greece was victorious. She was completed in 1913 and commissioned in 1914. Elli saw action during World War I and in the disastrous Asia Minor Expedition. An Italian submarine sank her before the outbreak of the Greco-Italian War on 15 August 1940 while she sat at anchor.

A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small number of museum ships that are still operational and thus capable of regular movement.

Several hundred museum ships are kept around the world, with around 175 of them organised in the Historic Naval Ships Association though many are not naval museum ships, from general merchant ships to tugs and lightships. Many, if not most, museum ships are also associated with a maritime museum.

The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a pre-dreadnought battleship and fast enough to outrun any battleship it encountered.

For many decades, naval technology had not advanced far enough for designers to produce a cruiser that combined an armored belt with the long-range and high speed required to fulfill its mission. For this reason, beginning in the 1880s and 1890s, many navies preferred to build protected cruisers, which only relied on a lightly armored deck to protect the vital parts of the ship. However, by the late 1880s, the development of modern rapid-fire breech-loading cannons and high-explosive shells made the reintroduction of side armor a necessity. The invention of case-hardened armor in the mid-1890s offered effective protection with less weight than previously.

A light cruiser is a type of small or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck. Prior to this smaller cruisers had been of the protected cruiser model, possessing armored decks only. While lighter and smaller than other contemporary ships they were still true cruisers, retaining the extended radius of action and self-sufficiency to act independently around the world. Cruisers mounting larger guns and heavier armor relative to most light cruisers would come to be known as heavy cruisers, though the designation of 'light' versus 'heavy' cruisers would vary somewhat between navies. Through their history light cruisers served in a variety of roles, primarily on long-range detached patrol work, covering other military operations or global shipping lanes, as scouts and screens for battle fleets, as destroyer command ships, fire-support vessels or even as convoy escorts.