The advent of better machinery and larger, faster destroyers and light cruisers effectively made them obsolete.
This meant that the arrangement of coal bunkers in the hull could no longer be relied upon as protection and the adoption of destroyer-type machinery resulted in a higher speed.
The earlier Hawkins class were therefore retrospectively classified as such, although they had been initially built as "improved light cruisers".
The "large light cruisers" were a pet project of Admiral Fisher to operate in shallow Baltic Sea waters and they are often classed as a form of battlecruiser.
The Abdiel class could reach 38 knots and in practice were used as fast transports to supply isolated garrisons, such as those at Malta and Tobruk.
Although at times called "through-deck cruisers", the Invincible class of the 1980s were small aircraft carriers.