Dodson, Aidan The British Hawkins Class Cruisers. An Odyssey Through Two World Wars

During the First World War, rumours of heavily armed German privateers led to the Royal Navy building the first modern heavy cruisers. Named after famous Elizabethan sailors, these ships were very different from the cumbersome armoured cruisers of the previous generation and were a further development of the highly successful light cruisers built since the mid-1910s. As such, they were the prototypes for the Washington Treaty cruisers that dominated naval construction in the 1920s, and two of them also pioneered the use of catapults for launching aircraft from cruisers. They were completed too late to participate actively in the First World War and had a mixed fate: they spent much of their careers as flagships, but were also attracted to rocky reefs, which proved fatal in two cases. The Cavendish (later Vindictive) fulfilled a remarkable series of functions during its career: it was built as a cruiser, then completed as an aircraft carrier, then converted back to a cruiser, before being converted into a special cadet training ship and finally a repair ship. Meanwhile, the Effingham underwent the most extensive conversion of any British cruiser of its time. All surviving ships were disarmed and almost scrapped as a result of the London Naval Treaty, but returned to serve in various capacities during the Second World War. Two of them were decorated with battle honours during the Norwegian Campaign albeit with fatal consequences in one case and the Hawkins and the Frobisher spent many years as ocean-going escorts in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans before being returned to bomb the beaches of Normandy. The history of the Hawkins class therefore weaves together strands that include the technical development of the cruiser in the United Kingdom and abroad, the early use of aircraft at sea, international naval diplomacy and the conclusion of treaties between the wars, the development of the cadet training system in the Royal Navy, the way in which vital southern and eastern trade routes were kept open, and the contribution of the naval forces to the success of the invasion of Europe. With its detailed descriptions and analyses of the ships and their development, as well as accounts of their careers, accompanied by an extensive collection of photographs and line drawings, this new history of an important class of Royal Navy cruisers will delight naval historians and enthusiasts, ship model builders and all those interested in the navy in peace and war.