Wikipedia:Today's featured list/December 2, 2022
A series of torpedo cruisers was built between the 1870s and the 1890s by the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) as part of a program intended to strengthen the fleet during a period of limited naval budgets. Six different classes, comprising eighteen torpedo cruisers, were constructed. The first vessel, Pietro Micca, was laid down in 1875, and was one of the first torpedo cruisers built by any navy. She proved to be a disappointment in service, being too slow to be an effective warship. Pietro Micca was followed by the more successful design, Tripoli, which provided the basis for the four Goito-class cruisers (example pictured) and the eight-vessel Partenope class. Most of the Italian torpedo cruisers served during the relatively uneventful 1880s, 1890s, and 1900s, and as a result, saw little activity outside of routine training operations. By the early 1900s, many of the cruisers had been reduced to subsidiary roles or had been discarded outright. A handful of vessels, specifically of the Partenope and Agordat classes, were still in front-line service by the time of the Italo-Turkish War in 1911–1912. (Full list...)