Charlemagne-class battleship

St Louis, April 1903
Class overview
Name:	Charlemagne
Builders:	Brest and Lorient shipyards
Operators:	French Navy
Preceded by:	Jauréguiberry
Succeeded by:	République-class
Built:	1894–1899
In service:	1897–1931
In commission:	1897–1915
Completed:	3
Lost:	1
Scrapped:	2
General characteristics
Type:	Predreadnought battleship
Displacement:	11,275 t (11,097 long tons) (deep load)
Length:	117.7 m (386 ft 2 in)
Beam:	20.3 m (66 ft 7 in)
Draught:	8.4 m (27 ft 7 in)
Installed power:	14,500 PS (10,700 kW) 20 Belleville water-tube boilers
Propulsion:	3 shafts, 3 four-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines
Speed:	18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range:	4,200 miles (3,650 nmi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:	727
Armament:	2 × 2 - 305 mm (12 in) Mle 1893 guns 10 × 1 - 138.6 mm (5.46 in) Mle 1893 guns 8 × 1 - 100 mm (3.9 in) Mle 1893 guns 20 × 1 - 47 mm Mle 1885 Hotchkiss guns 4 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armour:	Belt: 110–320 mm (4.3–12.6 in) Decks: 55–90 mm (2.2–3.5 in) Barbettes: 270 mm (10.6 in) Turrets: 320 mm (12.6 in) Conning tower: 326 mm (12.8 in)

The Charlemagne class was a class of three pre-dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy in the 1890s. The ships spent most of their careers assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron (Escadre de la Méditerranée). They had oddly eventful peacetime careers as they were involved in four accidental collisions between them, one of which sank a French submarine with all hands. Saint Louis was usually a fleet flagship during her career and Charlemagne twice participated in the occupation of the port of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos—then owned by the Ottoman Empire—once as part of a French expedition and another as part of an international squadron.

During World War I, they were initially used to escort Allied troop convoys in the Mediterranean. All three ships were ordered to the Dardanelles in November 1914 to guard against a sortie into the Mediterranean by the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben. Charlemagne and Gaulois joined British ships in bombarding Turkish fortifications in early 1915 while Saint Louis was briefly assigned to bombard Turkish positions in Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula. Gaulois was badly damaged by a Turkish shell during one of these bombardments and had to beach herself to avoid sinking. She later returned to the Dardanelles and rejoined her sisters, providing fire support during the Gallipoli Campaign until the Allies evacuated their troops. Saint Louis and Charlemagne were transferred to the squadron assigned to prevent any interference by the Greeks with Allied operations on the Salonica front in 1916 and Gaulois was en route to join them when she was sunk by a German submarine later that year.