The Saint Louis 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...

 capital

Capital ship

The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they generally possess the heaviest firepower and armor and are traditionally much larger than other naval vessels...

 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...

. She was laid down in 1893, launched in 1896, and completed in 1900 as the third battleship of her class

Ship class

A ship class is a group of ships of a similar design. This is distinct from a ship-type, which might reflect a similarity of tonnage or intended use. For example, the is a nuclear aircraft carrier of the Nimitz class....

, the Charlemagne class

Charlemagne class battleship

The Charlemagne class was a class of pre-dreadnought battleships of the French Navy. It consisted of three ships, the Charlemagne, the St Louis and the Gaulois. Several other single ship classes were based on the Charlemagne class...

. The ship saw service in the First World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, and was scrapped in 1933.

Design

The St Louis displaced 11300 tonnes (11,121.5 LT), was 118 metres (387.1 ft) long, had a beam

Beam (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 St Louis 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 the armament was eventually deemed too heavy for the ship's displacement. 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). The ship was also armed with four 450 millimetres (17.7 in) torpedo tubes.

Service history

After commissioning, the St. Louis was sent off on several cruises with the Third Battleship Squadron. On one of these, she accidentally rammed the French submarine Vendémiaire, killing 24. In the First World War, she was sent off to participate 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...

, where she was held in reserve while her sisterships, the Charlemagne and Gaulois, bombarded Ottoman ports. After the First World War, the ship returned to a normal peacetime naval atmosphere involving naval exercises and cruising in the Mediterranean sea. She was scrapped in 1933, one of the longest-surviving pre-dreadnoughts to remain in service.

External links

• CUIRASSE Charlemagne