The Dutch cruiser HNLMS Sumatra was a small protected cruiser with a heavy main gun. The ship was named after the island of Sumatra

Sumatra

Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...

 in the Dutch East Indies

Dutch East Indies

The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....

 (now Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

). The design resembled a smaller version of the Esmeralda concept (the 1883 protected cruiser built by Armstrong/Elswick shipyards for Chile) and is most similar in size to the Chinese protected cruiser Chi Yuan

Chinese cruiser Jiyuan

The Jiyuan , sometimes translated as Chiyuan, was a cruiser in the Chinese Beiyang fleet of the Qing government. It was originally ordered as the third vessel in the class of battleships, but as the necessary funds could not be raised and the order was changed to a smaller armoured deck cruiser....

 (1883) a ship built at about the same time as the Esmeralda. The Sumatra had the 8.2in. gun forward and the 5.9 in. gun aft, both in shields, with sponsons on the sides for the two 4.7in. guns. The Dutch Navy also built a larger protected cruiser with even heavier armament, the Koningen Wilhelmina der Nederlanden

HNLMS Koningin Wilhelmina Der Nederlanden

HNLMS Koningin Wilhelmina Der Nederlanden was a unique protected cruiser of the Royal Netherlands Navy build by NSM Amsterdam.-Design:The ship was long, had a beam of , a draught of , and had a displacement of 4,530 ton. The ship had engines and produced a top speed of .It had deck armour. The...

launched in 1892, which had an 11-in. gun forward and was most comparable to the Japanese protected cruisers of the Matsushima

Matsushima class cruiser

The was a class of protected cruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, with three ships named after the three most famous scenic spots in Japan. The Matsushima-class was a highly unorthodox design among cruisers of the 1890s, in that each ship had a primary armament of a single massive 320 mm gun,...

type. These ships represented a design philosophy in which navies that could not afford first class battleships (including the Netherlands) mounted heavy weapons on coast defense ships or moderately-sized protected cruisers with the idea these ships would pose a threat to first-class opponents.