French battleship Saint Louis

Saint Louis in April 1903
History
France
Name:	Saint Louis
Namesake:	King Louis IX of France
Builder:	Arsenal de Lorient
Cost:	26,981,000 francs
Laid down:	30 September 1893
Launched:	2 September 1896
Commissioned:	15 September 1900
Decommissioned:	8 February 1919
Reclassified:	As training ship, 8 February 1919 As accommodation hulk, 20 June 1920
Struck:	29 June 1931
Fate:	Sold for scrap, 25 April 1933
General characteristics
Class and type:	Charlemagne-class 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:	732 785 as flagship
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)

Saint Louis was the last of the three Charlemagne-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy in the mid-1890s. She spent most of her career assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron (escadre de la Méditerranée) and usually was chosen to serve as a flagship. The ship was involved in two accidental ramming incidents with two other French warships in her career, one of which sank a submarine.

When World War I began, she escorted Allied troop convoys for the first two months. Saint Louis was ordered to the Dardanelles in November 1914 to guard against a sortie into the Mediterranean by the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben. In 1915, she was transferred to the Eastern Mediterranean where she participated in bombarding Turkish positions in Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula. The ship returned to the Dardanelles in May and provided fire support during the Gallipoli Campaign. Saint Louis was transferred to the squadron assigned to prevent any interference by the Greeks with Allied operations on the Salonica front in May 1916, after a lengthy refit in France. The ship was placed in reserve in April 1917 and briefly became a training ship in 1919–20. She was converted to serve as an accommodation hulk in 1920 and listed for disposal as scrap in 1931. Saint Louis did not find a buyer, however, until 1933.