Italian cruiser Cristoforo Colombo (1892)

Cristoforo Colombo was an Italian unprotected cruiser or steel corvette (the older terminology) which was a replacement of an earlier ship with the same name. The original ship, the cruiser Cristoforo Colombo (1875), had a wooden hull and was armed with 8 4.7in., breech-loading guns and possibly a torpedo tube. This ship was aging by 1890 when it was decided that a ship of similar size and performance was adequate for the role.

The Cristoforo Colombo was a small to medium sized unprotected cruiser with a steel hull and was completed in 1894. The ship retained the same machinery of the earlier version, however the earlier ship’s speed of 16 knots was reduced to 13 knots as the engines could not produce the original power. The main armament was eight 4.7 in., 40-caliber guns, later reduced to six.

The Cristoforo Colombo had copper sheathing on its hull and was intended as a station ship for the Red Sea, where Italy had imperialist ambitions in Eritrea (already a colony) and Ethiopia (which had to be abandoned in 1896 after the bloody defeat at Adowa). This ship was similar in armament and performance to unprotected cruisers such as the Spanish Reina Cristina or the German Cormoran types, also meant for colonial duties. This type of ship was adequate for patrols of distant stations and gunboat diplomacy but were supplanted by faster protected cruisers in combat roles.