With all due respect, the Spruance class hulls are lineally descended from the Atlantas and Juneaus of WW II, via way of the Leahys. That should tell you something about what I know about the American navy was and what it is.
As for hull forms, take a good close look at the USS Nevada (Foreriver Shipbuilding) and the USS Pennsylvania. (Newport News.) Radically different power-plants and internal subdivision, but same general hull form and superstructure layout. You'll find more differences among the Washington treaty cruisers or within the same classes of WW I British battleships.
Musical lifts (changing the aircraft elevators and where the island goes) has been a bit of a process,
but since the oil-fired John F. Kennedy forward, that hull shape for nuclear powered carriers has been rather frozen because of the way the hull supports the flight deck as much as the weight of the massive nuclear reactors and the need for work volume in the integral hanger. Speed is just an added bonus.
edit:
Upon reflection I must apologize. I should not be irritated by helpful comments proffered. But again I should know my own navy's history and technology, shouldn't I? Especially since I've studied it.
For example, the statement:
talking about cautious, the british are often worse with conservatism and caution (that is the reason british systems tend to be heavier and bulkier then comparable US systems)
Up until about the mid 1920s, that is not true. The exact opposite as regards propulsion and armament is the truth. American engines and artillery were more overbuilt and somewhat more primitive than their British opposites. Once the Americans developed higher working pressure boilers and leak proof steam turbine casings and they matched British manufacturing standards for gearing did the lighter American marine engines appear. Lightweight American naval guns began in the mid-30s; although I grant you American gunmakers were better at their metallurgic craft than their British opposites in the Gilded age. Why that is so has something to do with the way the guns were made.
As for modern systems, British naval missiles are often derided as primitive, but they most certainly had the edge on the American navy throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. It was only with the USN's successful T-series missiles and radar systems that supported them that the British were finally eclipsed on the SAM front, but that was more due to the disastrous Sea Slug system than anything else.
[quote[the dutch are a lot less cautious, because they build in smaller (4 ship) series, in which there is room for modification and errors.[/quote]
Couldn't it be that the Dutch could draw on three successful naval traditions and established tech bases to avoid costly mistakes? Germany, Great Britain and after WW II, the United States? That's apparently not boldness in this age of steel navies and tight budgets, that's just Dutch common sense.
the uniformity of the USN in later years is thus mostly because of the large series of ships. of course, I simplify things here but try to look a bit more at the why (why do they look similar) and not just at the facts. (they do look similar)
If you look at the series of American destroyers up to the Washington naval treaty, you will usually see the same general characteristics of flush deck hull, Atlantic bow and a certain top-heaviness countered by ballast because the destroyers needed deck space, speed and long range. That is as you said, not a historic accident, but an American uniform requirement, but it does not explain why in their many limited 1930s series runs like the Mahans, stepped forecastle break hulls pop up and are tried out, are used in the Gridleys and Bagleys all the way to the Benhams and then suddenly you see the Americans revert to the flush deck Atlantic bow the minute they can get away from the naval limitation treaties that compelled them to make these uncharacteristic for them European type destroyers? Weight savings forced by treaty, not different more efficient hull forms drove those clunker 1930s designs.