Unlike most of their contemporaries which were designed for commerce raiding or to defend colonies and trade routes, Izumo and her half-sisters were intended as fleet scouts and to be employed in the battleline. The ship was long overall and between perpendiculars. She had a beam of and had an average draft of . Izumo displaced at normal load and at deep load. The ship had a metacentric height of . Her crew consisted of 672 officers and enlisted men. Izumo had two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft. Steam for the engines was provided by 24 Belleville boilers and the engines were rated at a total of . The ship had a designed speed of and reached during her sea trials from . She carried up to of coal and could steam for at a speed of . The main armament for all of the "Six-Six Fleet" armored cruisers was four eight-inch guns in twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The secondary armament consisted of 14 Elswick Ordnance Company "Pattern Z" quick-firing (QF), guns. Only four of these guns were not mounted in armored casemates on the main and upper decks and their mounts on the upper deck were protected by gun shields. Izumo was also equipped with a dozen QF 12-pounder 12-cwt guns and eight QF 2.5-pounder Yamauchi guns as close-range defense against torpedo boats. The ship was equipped with four submerged torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. All of the "Six-Six Fleet" armored cruisers used the same armor scheme with some minor differences. The waterline belt of Krupp cemented armor ran the full length of the ship and its thickness varied from amidships to at the bow and stern. It had a height of , of which was normally underwater. The upper strake of belt armor was thick and extended from the upper edge of the waterline belt to the main deck. It extended from the forward to the rear barbette. The Izumo class had oblique 127 mm armored bulkheads that closed off the ends of the central armored citadel. The barbettes, gun turrets and the front of the casemates were all 6 inches thick while the sides and rear of the casemates were protected by of armor. The deck was thick and the armor protecting the conning tower was in thickness. Construction and career The contract for Izumo, named after