Talk:General Discussion/@comment-92.1.124.15-20140728221300/@comment-24332640-20140729003640

Well, destroyers have been escort ships since the class was first created. The name "destroyer" actually comes from the term "torpedo boat destroyer". After the invention of the torpedo suddenly small, cheap boats could pose a credible threat to capital ships (before torpedos there really wasn't much they could do to even scratch them), and established navies around the world became concerned that people might just swarm their expensive capital ships with tons of tiny, cheap torpedo boats. So there was a need for a relatively small (but still much bigger than torpedo boats), fast, maneuverable, long-range warships that could escort capital ships and take out torpedo boats before they could get close to them. But they were not intended to take on capital ships themselves...though people started loading torpedos on the destroyers themselves and that expanded their capabilities a bit.

Of course later on the role of the destroyer was expanded to include ASW and AA warfare. But they were still always meant to be escort ships, it's just that what they were defending against changed.

I'm probably going off-topic but I thought that little bit of trivia was interesting...