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French battleship Charlemagne (1895)
Encyclopedia
The Charlemagne was a pre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought
Pre-dreadnought battleship is the general term for all of the types of sea-going battleships built between the mid-1890s and 1905. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad warships of the 1870s and 1880s...
battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
of the French Navy
French Navy
The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...
. In 1915, along with her sister-ship Gaulois
French battleship Gaulois (1896)
The Gaulois was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy.In 1915, along with her sister-ship Charlemagne, she took part in the Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign, under admiral Guépratte. The French squadron was leading the assault, and the Gaulois suffered hits from the Turkish...
, she took part in the Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign
Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign
The naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign of the First World War were mainly carried out by the Royal Navy with substantial support from the French and minor contributions from Russia and Australia. The Dardanelles Campaign began as a purely naval operation...
, under admiral Émile Paul Amable Guépratte
Émile Paul Amable Guépratte
Émile Paul Aimable Guépratte was a French admiral.Guépratte was born in Granville to a family of naval officers. He studied at the Lycée impérial in Brest from 1868, and joined the École Navale on 1 October 1871....
. She was named after Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
, a famous Frankish king.
Design
The Charlemagne displaced 11300 tonnes (11,121.5 LT), was 118 metres (387.1 ft) long, had a beamBeam (nautical)
The beam of a ship is its width at the widest point. Generally speaking, the wider the beam of a ship , the more initial stability it has, at expense of reserve stability in the event of a capsize, where more energy is required to right the vessel from its inverted position...
of 20.5 metres (67.3 ft) and a draught of 8.4 metres (27.6 ft). She was manned by 694 men. Equipped with a set of two steam engines rated at 14500 ihp, the Charlemagne could move at a maximum speed of 18 knots (9.8 m/s). She was one of the first French ships to be armed with twin mounted main guns, although a low displacement severely diminished the capability of them. Those were four 305 mm Mle 1893/96 guns. The main battery was augmented by a secondary battery of ten single 138 millimetres (5.4 in) guns and a tertiary battery of eight 100 millimetres (3.9 in). She was also armed with four 450 millimetres (17.7 in) torpedo tubes.
Service history
After she was commissioned, Charlemagne joined the 3rd Battle Squadron. In World War I, she and her sister Gaulois bombarded Ottoman fortifications and ports in February and March 1915 as part of the Naval operations in the Dardanelles CampaignNaval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign
The naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign of the First World War were mainly carried out by the Royal Navy with substantial support from the French and minor contributions from Russia and Australia. The Dardanelles Campaign began as a purely naval operation...
. After the war, she returned to duties performing training cruises and exercises in the western Mediterranean sea for nearly two years, before she was scrapped in 1920.