Milan was a late-19th-century unprotected cruiser in the French Navy. At the time of her completion, Milan was considered by several publications to be the fastest warship in the world. The warship was the last unprotected cruiser in French naval service, and Milan's design influenced the construction of later protected cruisers.
Design
By the late 1870s, senior officers in the French Navy had come to the realization that the unprotected cruisers and avisos then in the fleet's inventory were too slow to serve as effective scouts for the main battle fleet. The (Council of Works) of the French Navy issued a request for a new cruiser design that incorporated a high top speed and an armament solely consisting of the recently developed Whitehead torpedoes. The new ship was to have no sails, guns, or ram. Displacement was limited to around . The French naval engineer Louis-Émile Bertin had designed and proposed such a ship as early as 1875, and the examined his preliminary proposal at a meeting on 3 February 1880. They called for further details on 8 June, particularly concerning the propulsion machinery and the revolving torpedo launcher Bertin had suggested.
Despite the fact that they were unconvinced that Bertin's design was practical, they approved the ship on 24 May 1881 and the new ship was designated as an "" (fleet scout); the intended the new ship to serve primarily as an inexpensive test ship to evaluate new technologies that, should it prove to be successful, could also be used as a high-speed fleet scout. Tests with the revolving torpedo launcher proved it to be a failure, and it was discarded. Instead, a pair of individual torpedo tubes were added to the design, though their location and configuration are unknown. The gun armament was repeatedly revised between the acceptance of the design and the beginning of the ship's construction before the final armament was selected on 19 June 1882, three months after work on the ship had begun. On 19 September 1883, the torpedo tubes were removed from the ship, and so she entered service in 1886 armed only with guns, despite Bertin's original intention for the vessel.
Milan proved to be a fairly successful design, becoming what Admiral Théophile Aube, the French Minister of Marine in 1886, considered to be the ideal small cruiser. He ordered six further vessels, though these were developed into the protected cruisers of the and es.
Characteristics
Milan was long at the waterline, with a beam of and an average draft of . At her stern, her draft increased to . She displaced normally. Her hull featured a pronounced plough bow and short fore and sterncastles. The hull was constructed with steel. As was typical for French warships of the period, she had an overhanging stern. The ship had no armor protection. Her crew consisted of 150 officers and enlisted men originally, but had increased to 191 by 1891, as additional guns were added.
The ship was propelled by a pair of horizontal compound steam engines, each driving a screw propeller. Steam was provided by twelve coal-burning water-tube Belleville boilers that were ducted into two raked funnels located amidships. Water-tube boilers were a recent development, and they allowed the ship to get steam up and accelerate much faster than older fire-tube boilers. The boilers were placed on the centerline amidships, and the coal bunkers were arranged above them, allowing the coal to be fed by gravity, significantly reducing the stoking work required. To supplement her steam engines, she was fitted with a three-masted, fore-and-aft schooner rig.
The power plant was rated to produce , but on speed trials in 1885 using forced draft, she reached for a top speed of ; the contemporary journal The Mechanical Engineer noted that the vessel was "believed to be the fastest war vessel afloat." Milan nevertheless suffered from excessive vibration while steaming at high speed. Coal storage amounted to , which provided a cruising radius of at an economical speed of . The ship was capable of carrying extra coal that allowed her to steam for .
The ship was initially armed with a main battery of five guns carried in individual pivot mounts. One gun was placed on the forecastle, another was on the sterncastle, two were placed on the upper deck to starboard and the last on the deck to port. The fore- and sterncastle guns were fitted with gun shields, but the amidships guns were not. For close-range defense against torpedo boats, she carried eight 1-pounder Hotchkiss revolver cannon, all in individual shielded mounts. She also carried a single M1881 field gun that could be sent ashore with a landing party.