The Hawkins class was a class of five heavy cruisers of the Royal Navy designed in 1915 and constructed throughout the First World War. All ships were named after Elizabethan sea captains. The three ships remaining as cruisers in 1939 served in the Second World War, with Effingham being an early war loss through wreck; this was unusual since Raleigh was lost in a similar shipwreck on uncharted rocks in 1922 (and Vindictive was nearly lost to grounding in 1919).