Battleship, cruiser and destroyer ; what is the difference?

Hi. I am often confused when I try to understand the differences between a battleship, a cruiser, a destroyer, a frigate and a corvette. Are there more categories?

Can you explain me why we use them, how we can recognize them and what are their pros and cons?

Thanks for your help!

 

New recruit: "What do all these different ships do? Battleships, cruisers, destroyers?"

Old salt: "Battleships battle, cruisers cruise, destroyers, destroy."

Recruit: "What do frigates do?"

 

Fri Gates...Which is what a lot of early Windows users wanted to do.

 

Mind the gates. ..

 

Seriously though...
Heavy Carrier/Large Carrier
Fleet Carrier
Light Carrier
Escort Carrier

Super Battleship
Battleship(broken down to Super Dreadnought, Dreadnought, Pre-Dreadnought)
Battlecruiser
Light Battlecruiser(?)

Super Cruiser
Large Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Light Cruiser
Armed Merchant Cruiser/Auxiliary Cruiser

Large Destroyer/Super Destroyer
Destroyer Leader
Destroyer
Escort Destroyer
Destroyer Escort

Frigate
Corvette
Sloop

And probably many more I have forgotten.

The lines often blur defining the various subtypes, and have also changed over time.

 

Takao. Take control. You can do it. If you want to.

 

I'm the Court Jester here, you guys are stealing my material!

The meaning by name has been flexible by nation and time though out history, sometimes to confuse the enemy, sometimes to confuse their countries bean counters. Speaking in terms of WWII they have the following general meanings.

Battleships, a derivative ( I believe) of the age of sail term 'ship of the battle line', or the heaviest/largest ship with the most armor and most powerful guns designed to trade fire with another like it.

Cruiser, next size down, usually one quarter to a third as big as a battleship, broken into two major categories, Heavy with guns up to 8 inches and Light with guns of 6 inches and lower.

Destroyer, Usually a ocean going escort for other warships like Battleships/Carriers/Cruisers from aircraft, sub and other ships of its size. Roughly a quarter to half the size of a Cruiser.

Destroyer Escort/Frigate/Corvette, Usually one half to 2/3rds the size of a Destroyer, ocean going, but slower than a Destroyer intended to act as a escort for slow moving merchant ships to to hunt submarines.

Hope this crude description is helpful, and it should be noted that ships were often employed in roles not originally designed for.

 

Better than the best.

 

The Australian Navy goes down to Patrol Boat...


If they see illegals...The Navy has to get to them fast...


And one of those Friggy things...HMAS Darwin

 

The object forward of the Mark 13 missile launcher, just visible behind the bow bulwark, is the 8-cell Mark 41 Vertical Launch System installed in a major combat systems upgrade. It carries 32 Enhanced Sea Sparrow missiles in quad packs. The main missile system was upgraded from SM-1 to SM-2, making these very capable combatants for their size.

 

The FFG-7 class was. You probably recall it was retrofitted to the DE/FF-1052 class when they proved to be excessively wet forward.

 

Wow. Thank you very much for the classification. I never thought there were so many.