[Llarry]

Talk about the Old Navy... here's an 1889 photo of three protected cruisers: USS Chicago (foreground; flagship), USS Boston and USS Atlanta, along with the gunboat USS Yorktown. The ships were built in the mid-1880s and were the first steel-hulled warships built for the U.S. Navy.

Those protected cruisers were obsolete when built just a few years before this photo. The days of sail were over. They were modernized in the 1890s when still relatively new. The second photo shows Chicago after modernization. The sailmakers were out of jobs...

When the three above cruisers were commissioned, there were no abbreviated ship designations or hull numbers, but they were later assigned hull numbers; the Chicago became CA 14. The very last purpose-built cruiser of the USN was the USS Long Beach, which was originally designated CGN 160, but changed to CGN 9 before being finished, as missile cruisers were given their own block of numbers. The Ticonderoga class cruisers, of which 13 are still active, were originally to be guided missile destroyers, but were upgraded to cruiser designations before completion.

If you want to know about USN cruisers, there's plenty here:

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of-cruisers_of_the_United_States_Navy